I announced in my written statement of 16 March 2006, Hansard, col. 104WS, that in light of the unacceptable progress in implementing the Single Payment Scheme, steps were being taken to strengthen the leadership of the Rural Payments Agency. The House has subsequently been kept informed,—27 March 2006, Hansard, col. 543, and 29 March 2006, Hansard, col. 305WH,— of the measures introduced by the new acting chief executive to speed up payments without losing sight of the need to manage properly the disbursement of a large sum of public money.

The measures already in place have begun to bear fruit with 47,033 claims representing 39 per cent. of the customer population having being paid a total of £362.23 million as at 18 April. Given, in particular, the unavailability of the SPS system over the Easter period for a planned essential upgrade for the 2006 scheme, this represents useful progress. The upgraded system is now fully operational and further payment runs are planned over the rest of the week.

The acting chief executive has, however, now told me he does not feel confident that he can say with complete assurance that the RPA will be able to make all of the full payments by the end of June. Given that advice, I have authorised that work on a system to make substantial partial payments to the remaining claimants should now be given priority and I further decided that the system should be deployed as soon as it is operationally possible to do so. The RPA will in the meantime continue to make full payments when claims have been fully validated, with historic claimants having priority.