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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many farmers in St Austell and Newquay constituency have not received payment from the Rural Payments Agency for their (a) Entry Level Stewardship and (b) Higher Level Stewardship claims for 2017.

Unlike Countryside Stewardship, which is a newer scheme, the information held centrally on Environmental Stewardship agreements and claims does not reliably contain the detail which would allow us to identify that a claimant resided in a particular constituency. The resource cost to give Environmental Stewardship claim data at parliamentary constituency level is too great.

Across England, for 2017 just under 98% of Environmental Stewardship agreement holders have received their advance payment and 80% have received their 2017 final payment. The Rural Payments Agency took on administration of Environmental Stewardship in October 2018 and is continuing to simplify the administration of the scheme as far as possible under the current EU system.