Lord Willoughby de Broke – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Willoughby de Broke on 2016-06-27.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government why the announcement by the EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Phil Hogan, on 8 June of an extension until 15 October of the payment window for the Rural Payment Agency (RPA) to make payments to qualifying farmers is not yet available on the RPA website.

Lord Gardiner of Kimble

Commissioner Hogan announced his intention to allow applications from Member States for CAP direct payments to be made after the closure of the payment window without incurring the penalties that would otherwise fall on paying agencies for making late payments. Defra and the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) noted this announcement.

Once we have received information from all UK paying agencies concerning the value of payments made by 30 June, we will be in a position to consider whether the UK should submit a request for such penalties to be waived.

The RPA remains focused on getting top up 2015 BPS payments to those that received bridging payments, out as promptly as possible.