<p>Glastir Applications</p>

Part of 3. 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:23 pm on 17 May 2017.

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Photo of Lesley Griffiths Lesley Griffiths Labour 3:23, 17 May 2017

Thank you. You’re quite right—since I think it was a written question that was issued to the Leader of the Welsh Conservatives, there have been a further 563 claims paid, and I’ve given you the current position today. We did inform farmers that this would happen, because of the way that we were doing the BPS after the changes last year, so I don’t accept that the Glastir payments are late, because we didn’t actually say when they would be paid. However, I do appreciate the difficulties. We did actually say we would start paying Glastir payments in February—we actually started in January, so we were a bit earlier, and as I’ve said today, they will all be paid by the end of June.

You asked about loans, and I am aware that the Scottish Government are doing that. Any loan scheme would likely fail EU state aid rules, and I think that would then increase the risk of us being penalised financially. I also think it would take time to establish, and quite frankly I’d rather RPW’s staff be out there getting those claims processed as quickly as possible.