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 she has made of the number of payments made to farmers by the Rural Payments Agency.

By 31 December, the Rural Payments Agency had made over 107,000 payments worth more than £1.6 billion across the Basic Payments, Countryside Stewardship and Environmental Stewardship schemes. This means that 97.9% of farmers had received at least one payment during the first month of the opening of the payment window.