Single Payment Scheme

We must not lose sight of the fact that, irrespective of how many tonnes of metaphorical slurry we dump over the heads of civil servants, and irrespective of how many Ministers are transferred to the silo of the Whips Office or the wide open spaces of the Back Benches, the people who are suffering are our constituents: farmers who went into the system in good faith. Of course, post mortems do not revive bodies and I am pleased to hear from farmers present that DEFRA has started to prioritise what seems to be a reasonable group. It has decided to prioritise the middle range of historical claimants, but will not yet be drawn on what the exact definition of that band is. It would be useful if the Minister were to tell the House what those definitions are later on. Regarding the rate at which payments are made, we heard yesterday the statement that around 23 per cent. of claims by volume had been paid and about 13 per cent. of payments by value, so an awful lot of money is still to be paid to people who have been really hard pressed for a good number of years.