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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent estimate he has made of the number of payments made to farmers by the Rural Payments Agency in (a) Suffolk and (b) Suffolk Coastal constituency in each of the last five years.

The Rural Payment Agency estimate they have made 12,617 number of payments to Farm Businesses in (a) Suffolk and (b) Suffolk Coastal constituency in the last five years.

The figures provided below relate to payments released within the specified financial years irrespective of the scheme year to which individual payments are related and only cover payments that are provided to farmers by the Rural Payment Agency. The volume of payments is based on a financial year and therefore a customer could have received a payment for 2 scheme years in the same financial year.