Single Farm Payment Scheme

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his very generous comments; I am indeed hock-deep in Defra briefings. I am well aware of the situation for many farmers, as my noble friend has described, and many lessons clearly have to be learned from this first year. Indeed, we are looking to have 90% of farmers being paid their 2016 BPS claims in December. I shall be visiting the RPA as soon as I can, and I very much hope that we get into a better situation for the coming year.

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)]

My Lords, were these delays caused because money was not released through Europe or was it, as many farmers have told me, that the money had been transferred to Defra but Defra had not paid it out? Where was the delay?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, there are a number of reasons for this. In part, as I said in my first reply, it is because this is a new CAP with a lot of complication, which we in the UK sought to make less complicated. The noble Lord will know about disallowance, and one of the issues that comes forward is ensuring that we have a much-reduced disallowance situation. Money was available but there were very sound reasons why we had to ensure that there was a reduction in disallowance.