§ Mr. Andrew TurnerTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how many transactions by correspondence, telephone or e-mail take place on average each year between her Department and farmers subject to each(a) quota, (b) headage payment and (c) area payment. [26693]
§ Mr. Morley[holding answer 11 January 2002]: The information is not available and records held by the Department are not sufficiently detailed to enable it to be extracted. The total number of letters received by the Department from farmers in the categories mentioned in the financial years 1999–2000 and 2000–01 were 32,812 and 34,051 respectively. This excludes claim forms and any covering communications which did not call for a response.
The numbers of claims, payments and quota registrations for the two years were:
1999–2000 2000–01 Claims Payments Claims Payments Headage based schemes 181,285 545,336 320,271 794,527 Area based schemes 73,447 1119,159 72,700 291,155 Quota transactions 18,900 18,920 1 For 1999–2000 this includes advance payments for oilseeds and separate payments for non food set-aside. 2 For 2000–01 this includes separate payments for non food set-aside.