John Penrose

Conservative Party | Weston-super-Mare

Single Farm Payment

John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con): One of my farmers recently tried to take the Secretary of State to court by issuing a summons for her in the Weston-super-Mare small claims court. The right hon. Lady will doubtless be sad to hear that she has been deprived of the opportunity of coming to visit the beautiful town of Weston-super-Mare because of a legal technicality—but does she agree that that farmer, Paul Bateman, typifies the frustration felt by farmers across the country, particularly when he received a letter from the Rural Payments Agency telling him exactly how much he was owed in euros, but no cheque was enclosed with the letter? Would it not have been simple for someone to have signed a cheque, put it in with the letter and got that one out of the way immediately?

Margaret Beckett: No. We are doing everything we can to speed up the payments system. On the validation of claims, identifying the amount is the first step, but I recognise that it is the cheque that really matters. Far more cheques are being issued, and that work will continue. As I have said, our top priority is a system that at least involves substantial partial payments