§ Mr. Peter AinsworthTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if she will make a statement on the delays in making Integrated Control and Administration System (IACS) payments. [21106]
§ Margaret Beckett[holding answer 6 December 2001]: Several thousand man days of effort on the processing of CAP payments have been lost by the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) as a result of industrial action. This action comes on top of the diversion of significant numbers of staff to deal with the foot and mouth disease (FMD) outbreak. In addition the need to develop computer software upgrades for the bovines schemes to reflect regulatory changes has meant that the start of advance payments has been delayed. Moreover, because of the need to perform FMD cross-checks in order to establish entitlement to aid progress with processing is slower than normal.
As a result of these factors advance payments on the livestock schemes are expected to be made within the advertised payment windows but later than would have been the case in a normal year.
The Arable Area Payments Scheme (AAPS) under which payments are made in a regulatory payment window running from 16 November to 31 January is the scheme mainly affected by industrial action. In a normal year approximately 60–70 per cent. of the aid would be paid in the first two to three weeks of the window. This year the figure will be a little over 50 per cent. The Rural Payments Agency is taking all reasonable steps to mitigate the impact of the industrial action to ensure that payments delays are kept to the absolute minimum.