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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to her Department's news story, Environment Secretary calls for fewer inspections to make CAP simpler for farmers, published on 21 July 2015, what policies are included in the overhaul of the greening requirements she requested.

Our priority is a review of the Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) to ensure inspections, penalties and controls are proportionate to the EU Fund, and costs to Member States' implementation. There are two key areas that underpin IACS that can help achieve this ambition: a simplification of the inspections regime to make it more proportionate and risk-based, whilst maintaining an effective fraud deterrent; and a more pragmatic and proportionate penalties and control regime. This will help streamline the Common Agricultural Policy by reducing overall administrative burden and be fairer for farmers.

The European Commission has a requirement to review the Greening Ecological Focus Area requirements in 2016 and we expect work to commence in the autumn of this year. UK Ministers have asked the Agriculture Commissioner to extend his review to also cover the other elements of the Greening requirements, in particular the Crop Diversification requirement.

As part of this work, we continue to develop our underpinning evidence base.