EC refuses to pick up 'foot and mouth' tab

Taxpayers are facing a huge bill for the foot-and-mouth crisis because of government blunders.

Ministers have failed to convince agriculture chiefs in Brussels that the huge compensation pay-outs were justified. The European Commission has agreed to pay only £350 million of the £950 million Defra hoped to recoup.

A new report by the government spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, reveals that officials at the Ministry of Agriculture - now known as the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) - authorised huge payments to farmers without verifying the claims.

In one case, a farmer who paid an average of £60 each for six rams in October 2000 was paid £535 for each animal the following March. In another case, a farmer who paid £14,000 for a bullock in January 2001 received £40,000 when it was slaughtered four months later.

There are also fears that Defra has failed to make contingency plans for another outbreak following the 2001 epidemic. A total of 6.5million animals were slaughtered, devastating many farms and rural businesses.