Common Agricultural Policy Single Payment and Support Schemes (Cross-compliance) (England) Regulations 2005

My Lords, I am so sorry; my hearing must be going as well. The only thing that the Minister has not touched on—again, I would be glad of some steer on this, so perhaps he can write to me afterwards—is this whole question of applications through which people register for the single farm payment. As I said earlier today, I have drawn another case to the Minister’s attention, which is that farmers still cannot submit their applications and secure agreements on the size of fields and on mapping and so on. We discussed bulk earlier, but I did not press the Minister on that because I realise that would be nearly impossible for him. Until all the applications are in, he will not know how many are outstanding. My understanding is that there is still a problem in certain parts of the country in that farmers cannot get their applications dealt with. I am sure that he will be as concerned as I am that there is a delay. My wish was that he might follow that up and try to determine what is still outstanding within the RPA and that, where there are blockages, applications might be fast-tracked, because it is not in the Government’s interest—it is certainly not in the farmers’ interest—that these payments are delayed. The farmers will not be paid until the first lot of applications have been dealt with. On a second related point, in a debate a couple of weeks ago, the noble Lord, Lord Carter, said that some farmers had received payments up to June 2005. That is quite true, but they were only for money due in 2004, not for money due in 2005. That is why I raised this issue, because I am tied up with quite a few of the rural stress groups and rural support groups. Unfortunately, applications are coming in quite heavily and quite fast, because we have moved to a single payment rather than having smaller payments paid throughout the year, and there is a big cash-flow problem. That is why it was so important that we had the opportunity to raise the matter today. The Minister is nodding, and I would be grateful if he could keep an eye on the issue.