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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the Rural Payment Agency’s ability to handle the change announced to SFIs this week.

As the principal sponsor of the RPA, Defra works closely with RPA officials at every level to provide constructive challenge and support on RPA implementation of policy changes. The RPA’s ability to implement policy changes is well understood and comprehensive planning and discussion is undertaken between the RPA and Farming and Countryside Programme to ensure that changes are implemented smoothly, including external communications and customer handling. There is full confidence and understanding of the RPAs ability to handle the recent announcement on the Sustainable Farming Incentive.