Single Payment Scheme

: The reason, as I understand it, was that although the payments had begun, the speed of the payments could not be ramped up because of the complexity of the task. I will come on to some of the action points that have been taken to rectify that since. On the following day, Thursday 16 March, the decision to remove Mr. McNeill was announced, along with the appointment of the new acting CEO for the RPA, Mark Addison, a senior DEFRA civil servant. He was our acting permanent secretary for several months recently and is a man with extensive experience of delivery in both the public and private sectors. Within four days of his appointment, by Tuesday 21 March, Mr. Addison had compiled an initial report that recommended a number of actions aimed at speeding up payments while retaining proper regard for the dispersal of large sums of public money. Those actions were set in train immediately. They were outlined in the answer given by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to Monday's urgent question, and I will remind hon. Members briefly of them. First, disproportionate checks will be removed from the payment authorisation system in order to speed up the flow of payments once claims have been validated. Secondly, the validation of claims will be prioritised to release the maximum value of payments as quickly as possible as opposed to the maximum number of individual claims, which will mainly benefit the large number of middle-sized historic customers. I am afraid that I cannot give the exact figure to my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor). The farming industry does not want the figures given out either, because the figures are not rigid. We do not want people to expect their payments to happen quickly and for them not to happen. Thirdly, key mapping work associated with clearing validation at the Reading office will be centralised. Fourthly, the RPA's capacity will be strengthened in key areas and its structure will be changed to streamline command and control. Mr. Addison gave his second progress report to Ministers yesterday evening. It showed that payments had reached more than 13 per cent. of the total value or 23 per cent. of the number of payments.