§ Mr. LuffTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what steps he is taking to reduce the costs of implementation of agri-environment schemes including Countryside Stewardship. [117686]
§ Mr. MorleyWe have already achieved some reduction in the costs of implementing agri-environment schemes as a proportion of payments to farmers. Between 1996–97 and 1999–2000, the costs for scheme monitoring and the provision of technical advice rose from £12.3 million to just over £14 million, while payments to farmers almost doubled.
In addition, in order to cope with the anticipated doubling of applications for Countryside Stewardship this year, we have introduced a number of steps to help streamline the application process.
560WIn the medium terms we plan to carry out a major review of agri-environment schemes to consider reshaping and simplifying them in time to feed in to the mid-term evaluation of the England Rural Development Plan in 2003.