"Appallingly lax" government officials allowed a Devon farmer to get away with �157,000 in subsidies for land which was non-existent or thousands of miles away, MPs have found.

This case ought to be an urgent wake-up call

David Rendel, committee member

The grid references supplied by Thomas Bowden were for areas in Iceland, Greenland and the North Sea.

But officials at the former Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Maff) did not notice.

They also failed to notice Bowden was claiming European Union money for different crops on the same piece of land, until they were alerted by an anonymous tip-off.

'Slow to take action'

Maff - now reconstituted as the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and officials from the Intervention Board - now the Rural Payments Agency - have both come in for sharp criticism in the MPs' report.

Mr Leigh says not enough is being done to prevent subsidy cheats

The Commons public accounts select committee found the officials did not pursue irregular claims for EU subsidy with "sufficient vigour".

And not enough was being done to prevent other farm scams being carried out at the taxpayers' expense.

The committee's chairman Conservative MP Edward Leigh, said: "This is a tale of appallingly lax control systems.

"The public bodies involved were slow to identify the fraud, slow to determine its full extent and slow to take recovery action.

"While important changes have since been made to the control systems, I am still not satisfied that enough is being done in key areas such as using forensic evidence to check fire damage claims."

Whistle blowing

Another committee member, Liberal Democrat MP David Rendel, said: "This is just one example of a consistent failure by the government to check up on the authenticity of claims for agricultural subsidies."

He added: "This case ought to be an urgent wake-up call to a government that has so far done far too little to protect the taxpayer against this type of waste."

Labour committee member Geraint Davies said the Bowden case was "appalling" because it had only come to light "through whistle-blowing" rather than proper checks.

"Fundamentally, if you have got the Common Agricultural Policy, which is a subsidy driven system, obviously there is an incentive to defraud a bureaucratic system like that in any case," Mr Davies told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"The government should be speeding ahead, trying to abolish that."

Digitised mapping

The National Farmers' Union said there was "little evidence of abuse of the system".

"There are severe penalties in place for those who make wrong applications, even if errors are made innocently," a spokeswoman said.

"However the Rural Payments Agency also needs to make the necessary checks to ensure that frauds are suppressed."

The Rural Payments Agency, which distributes CAP cash in the UK, welcomed the committee's report and its acknowledgement "that we have taken steps to prevent similar fraud occurring".

"Significant" EU and UK changes had been made in the way the CAP was administered to close any loopholes, the agency said.

Farmer jailed

A Rural Land Register was being created with digitised mapping and a free "fraud helpline" - 0800 347 347 - has been set up.

Officials have recovered just �1,325 of the �157,000 claimed by Bowden, of Eastercombe Farm, Heanton, north Devon.

The farmer was jailed for two-and-a-half years in October 2000 at Exeter Crown Court.

He pleaded guilty to nine charges of defrauding the Common Agricultural Policy Scheme, relating to the years 1994 to 1996.