Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many fines the Rural Payments Agency has paid to the EU as a result of (a) mistakes in payments and (b) late payments to farmers in the last five years; and what the value was of those fines.

The European Commission (EC) would expect the Rural Payments Agency to make recoveries or top up payments where the initial payment made was found to be inaccurate. These payment adjustments are not subject to EC fines.

However, the EC may apply fines, called disallowance, where they consider payments have been made which infringe scheme regulations or control measures. Financial penalties resulted in disallowance across a range of control measures, such as Cross Compliance; and a range of payment schemes disbursed by the RPA; and against payments which the Commission consider late. These are payments made outside of the regulatory payment window, which runs from 1 December to 30 June each year. The total disallowance applied by the commission is reported in the Annual Report and Accounts which are available at gov.uk. The split between disallowance (not including late payments) and late payment penalties within each published account is: