Mark Pritchard – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Mark Pritchard on 2016-03-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to improve the speed with which payments are made to small farmers under the Basic Payment Scheme.

George Eustice

As of 10 March the Rural Payments Agency has paid in the region of 83% of all eligible claims received. Of these some 81% of small farm businesses had received their payments. The Rural Payments agency is working to pay the remainder of claims as promptly as possible with between 800 and 1,000 staff working on processing claims.