Former Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett and senior Defra officials should be called to account over the "fiasco" of delayed EU payments to farmers, a parliamentary committee has said.

A report by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee calls the handling of the introduction of the new Single Payments Scheme (SPS) for farmers a "catastrophe" and a "serious and embarrassing failure for Defra and the Rural Payments Agency (RPA)".

"Defra's choice of payment method was complex and very high risk and the RPA had warned Defra repeatedly of the risk involved," the report said.

In its report, the committee questions why some leading Defra and RPA officials most closely involved with the SPS have moved on unscathed or stayed in post.

The report mentions Ms Beckett, former Permanent Secretary Sir Brian Bender and the Director General for Sustainable Farming, Food and Fisheries, Andy Lebrecht.

Conservative MP Michael Jack: "This report is as much about failed policy implementation as it is about a lack of accountability."

The committee's chairman, Conservative MP Michael Jack, said: "This report is as much about failed policy implementation as it is about a lack of accountability.

"The reason that we are calling for people to consider their positions is because of Defra's failure to carry out one of its principal core functions.

"Whatever one's view about the CAP, Defra has a duty to ensure that farmers receive the payments to which they are entitled.

"In this case Defra failed to do this on time and on budget."

The committee wants new guidance to make clear to ministers what they should do to take responsibility in the event of serious departmental failure.

It also recommends that the Cabinet secretary reappraise the work of past and present members of Defra's senior management team to determine whether they should remain in post.

"A culture where ministers and senior officials can preside over failure of this magnitude and not be held personally accountable creates a serious risk of further failures in public service delivery," the report concludes.

"Accountability should mean that good results are rewarded but a failure as serious as this of a Department to deliver one of its fundamental functions should result in the removal from post of those to whom the faulty policy design and implementation can be attributed."

Ms Beckett is now the foreign secretary.