THE impact of the disastrous government farm subsidy scheme could drive some farmers "dangerously close to ending their lives", ministers have been warned.

Tory MP Ian Liddell-Grainger said the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) "makes the mafia look honest" with a computer system "designed by a vicious Dr Strangelove with a bizarre grudge against the farming community".

In an outspoken attack on the flawed system, designed to pay out European subsidies to English farmers, the Somerset MP also likened the head of the RPA to comedian Tommy Cooper, saying: "He made a whole load of public money disappear – just like that."

Last year the Commons Public Accounts Committee published a damning assessment of the scale of the failures in the handling of the Single Farm Payments over four years.

It said millions were ploughed into a computer system which is "cumbersome, overly complex and at risk of becoming obsolete".

Click here to read Matt Chorley's latest blog

In 2005, the first year of operation, payments of around £1.5 billion were not completed for more than a year. Some farmers suffered underpayments totalling up to £19.3 million.

Labour ministers have been repeatedly accused of failing to realise the scale of the problems.

In a Commons debate Mr Liddell-Grainger, MP for Bridgwater, said: "Some farmers are being paid too much, some too little and, in many cases, some are paid absolutely nothing at all.

"It has driven some to distraction and others, I am afraid, to bankruptcy.

"I fear that a few may come dangerously close to ending their lives because of the antics of a dreadful agency."

He said the agency "came in with an overdose of stupidity and a typically dangerous political target that the Government were trying to hit".

The system is run by an "inefficient computer" and managed by "a team of blundering idiots".

RPA chief executive Tony Cooper and Defra permanent secretary Helen Ghosh were accused of "presiding over a festering dung heap of an agency, but they continue to say that everything is getting better".

"The whole system is a conspiracy to drive us all mad. It seems to have been devised by a vicious Dr Strangelove with some bizarre grudge against the farming community," he added.

He was critical of computer firm IBM for the system which has caused so many problems. "IBM was busy doing what it seems to do best – making a sow's ear out of a silk purse at our expense," he said.

Farming minister Jim Fitzpatrick said the RPA "aims to provide a more consistent, reliable and cost-effective service" despite having an "unenviable task".