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

What steps he has taken to reduce delays in processing applications for the basic payment scheme.

Since the introduction of the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) in 2015, the Rural Payments Agency has made improvements in the processing of applications including the introduction of online applications, online land and entitlement transfers, reducing the time to process transactions, and further support and guidance to help farmers successfully submit their applications. This has led to improvements in the BPS payment performance with over 90% of eligible farmers being paid by the end of December for the 2016 and 2017 scheme years.