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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what contingency funding her Department has set aside for future disallowance penalties imposed by the EU on the UK in each of the next five years.

The amount Defra has accrued for each of the last ten financial years following the conclusion of EU audits is shown in the table below. These figures relate to a number of different Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) schemes over a number of historical scheme years as disallowance is paid in arrears.

(*) Reflects the sums the European Commission has ruled cannot be reimbursed (i.e. the amounts they have “disallowed”).

(**) Includes £11million in disallowance relating to Northern Ireland. All other figures relate to England only. The Devolved Administrations are now responsible for disallowance relating to their administration of the CAP.

The Department’s Annual Report and Accounts in 2014/15 provides provisions of £64.5million for future disallowance related to historical audits. Future disallowance penalties are difficult to predict. However, the Department’s aim is to reduce disallowance to as low a level as possible and we expect a return to disallowance of about 2 per cent of scheme value by 2019.