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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to ensure its services are available online; and if she will make a statement.

Defra is developing two of the twenty five Digital Exemplar programmes across Government. These are:

· The Common Agricultural Policy Delivery programme - a new digital service to implement the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in England.

· The Waste Carrier Registrations programme to replace the previous paper based system, making it quicker and easier for waste carrier businesses to register online. This is being delivered in two phases, with the first phase available to customers now. The proportion of registrations made using the digital service since December 2013 presently stands at 97.3%.

Many Defra services are already online, including Rod Licence Applications, the Cattle Tracing System, Animal Disease Alert Notifications and Farm Surveys. Defra is building up its Digital capability to ensure we can deliver more services on-line.