What proposals it has to ensure early payment of agri-monetary compensation to farmers, whether it will provide any matching funding and, i…

Subject to final EU Commission approval we propose to begin making sheep agrimoney payments in early April and beef agrimoney payments in mid to late April.Of the £156 million optional agrimoney package announced by the Government on 27 February 2001 all but £30 million is subject to match funding. In other words the EU will be funding £93 million and the UK Exchequer £63 million. However because of the operation of the Fontainebleau agreement the UK taxpayer will end up paying £129 million or some 83% of the total.We estimate that Scotland's share of the UK package will be around £241/2 million, of which £151/2 million will be EU funded and £ 9 million UK funded.