"I will work across government and beyond to respond
to the challenges of increasing food production, adapting
to climate change, protecting our natural environment and
ensuring we live sustainably," said new Defra Secretary
Caroline Spelman after being appointed to the coalition Cabinet.
Formerly Conservative Party chairman and holder of a number
of shadow ministerial posts, Spelman is not thought of as
a great orator but she has the advantage of a solid agricultural
policy background. In addition to making her the most appropriately
experienced agriculture Minister of recent decades, these
agricultural credentials potentially lay her open to accusations
of conflict of interests (real or perceived).
Secretary of State (Caroline Spelman MP) Portfolio:
* Overall responsibility for departmental
policy; particular interest in CAP reform, biodiversity and
climate change
* Strategy, budget and finances
* Legislative programme
* Emergencies
* EU and international relations
* Environment Agency
* Natural England
Born in 1958, she was educated at Herts and Essex Grammar
School before reading European Studies at Queen Mary College,
University of London.
Fluent in French and German, she lived in Paris for 6 years
where she worked for the International Federation of Sugar
Beet Growers after working for the NFU as sugar advisor.
While living in Paris she met her husband Mark, now with
Accenture. She fought the Parliamentary seat of Bassetlaw
in 1992, 4 months pregnant with her second child and with
her first child in a pushchair. She also wrote a book on biofuels
before eventually entering Parliament in 1997. Spelman's appointment
has courted controversy in the mainly non-farming media for
three reasons:
1. Sleaze: Spelman was ordered to return expenses that she
claimed to pay her nanny during the 'nannygate' affair of
March 2009. She agreed to repay the cash and issued an apology.
She also claimed £40,000 for bills and cleaning for
her second home in her constituency, despite her husband,
Mark, claiming it was his main home when he unsuccessfully
stood for the EU elections in June 2009. Finally, she over-claimed
hundreds of pounds for council tax. She has now paid this
back, telling the media it was a "one-off administrative
oversight".
* Her lobbying background: She and her husband Mark set up
Spelman, Cormack & Associates in 1989 as a food and biotech
lobbying firm. Cormack is her unmarried name. She resigned
as a director about a year ago and transferred her share of
the company to her husband. At this point, the company address
changed from her constituency home to her London flat. The
latest year in which it filed full accounts with Companies
House was 2006. The company is insolvent with liabilities
(directors' loans) exceeding its assets. It did not trade
in 2005 or 2006 and made losses of around £1,500 in
both those years. It has accrued a capital deficit of £9,941.
The company has clearly been dormant since 2005 and presumably
was a home for any freelance consultancy and lobbying work
that she and her husband did during career breaks.
* Her husband: Mark is a Director of Accenture, the company
intimately involved with the computer-driven meltdown at the
RPA. His CV seems to indicate that he has more important clients
than the RPA. It states, "Mark is an international
businessman with considerable knowledge and experience of
the global energy and utility markets. He leads Accenture's
Global Strategy practice and runs Accenture's global macro
economic and political think-tank and the Institute for High
Performance. He is responsible for the firm's strategic relationship
with the World Economic Forum (WEF) and is a regular participant
and session leader at Davos and the WEF regional summit."
There is no evidence that he has been involved in the RPA
catastrophe and his wife was not in office at the time that
the RPA awarded Accenture a £35 million 7-year contract
to develop new and more efficient systems in 2003. However,
the contract expires this year so Spelman will have to delegate
her decision-making powers on the termination or renewal of
the contract, under Ministerial rules.
* While InsideTrack's investigations into the
media's concerns about her former company directorship and
her husband's business activities have proven them largely
unfounded, the claim in her CV that she was a Research Fellow
with the Centre for European Agricultural Studies (CEAS) seems
somewhat overstated. A CEAS staff member of the time said:
"Caroline Spelman was awarded a fellowship or similar
to do her PhD or similar at Wye in the late 1980s. The Centre
for European Agricultural Studies was run and housed in Wye
College where we were based at the time so she was attached
to the College rather than employed by us but Nick Young (
the managing director) frequently met her over coffee etc.
at the time". So it would seem that she started a
postgraduate course at Wye, which she never completed, and
drank a lot of coffee.
* Notwithstanding the idiosyncrasies of her CV, Spelman has
now jumped into the Cabinet seat that Nick Herbert, the shadow
Secretary, might have hoped that David Cameron had reserved
for him. Herbert had been an enthusiastic Shadow and deserved
to get the job but his promise to lift the hunting ban put
him in a difficult position in light of the proposed free
vote (see below). Herbert may also have lost out to the pressure
on Cameron to appoint more female Cabinet Ministers. He becomes
a junior Minister in the Home Office responsible for policing,
a job which he apparently shadowed effectively before.
* Cameron did, however, keep Jim Paice's seat on the bus,
which is good news for agricultural interests. Paice is well
known in East Anglia, having been both a farmer and contractor.
Born in Felixstowe, Suffolk in 1949, Jim attended Framlingham
College. From school he spent 2 years working on farms before
attending Writtle Agricultural College and starting a career
in farm management. For 8 years before his election he was
a director of a training and management development company
which was owned by a large farmer-owned business.
Minister of State for Agriculture and Food (Jim Paice
MP) Portfolio:
* Farming
* Food
* Animal health (including endemic and exotic
diseases)
* Responsibility and cost-sharing
* Welfare of farm animals
* Single Payments Scheme
* RDPE
* Forestry (including Forestry Commission)
* Agriculture and forestry carbon budgets
* Hunting and shooting
* Agricultural wages
* Gangmasters licensing
* Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS)
* Better regulation
* Deputising for the Secretary of State at
EU Agriculture Council
Richard Benyon and Lord Henley complete the Ministerial team
with portfolios covering the natural environment and fisheries.
Richard Benyon lives on the 4,200ha Englefield Estate in
Berkshire and calls himself a farmer. He was born in 1960
and trained at RAC Cirencester. He is a chartered surveyor
and the great-great-grandson of Conservative Prime Minister
Lord Salisbury. He was part of the Shadow Defra team before
his appointment.
Lord Henley will deal with all the departmental business
in the Lords and has responsibility for waste management and
recycling. Oliver Eden (Lord Henley) entered the House of
Lords in 1977 and has held a number of front bench positions
both in government under Margaret Thatcher and John Major
and also in opposition.
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Natural Environment
and Fisheries (Richard Benyon MP)
* Natural environment
* Ecosystem services & Biodiversity
* National parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty
* Wildlife & JNCC
* Flooding and water (including the Nitrates Directive)
* Inland waterways (including British Waterways)
* Land management and soil & Coastal erosion
* Rural affairs
* Marine and Coastal Access Act implementation
* Coastal and wider access, countryside and rights of way
* Departmental administration
* Apprenticeships
* Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Lord Henley) * Environmental regulation & GMOs
* Chemicals and pesticides
* Climate change & Biofuels
* Sustainable development, consumption and production Welfare
of companion and wild animals
* Plant health
* Science, evidence and research
* Waste and recycling
* All departmental business in the Lords
Three out of four of the Ministerial team have previous experience
of agriculture or agricultural policy, which is a welcome
change from the succession of Ministers from inner city seats.
The 'Programme for Government' was unveiled by the coalition
on 20 May, focussing Defra on environmental sustainability
but also saying "We also believe that much more needs
to be done to support the farming industry, protect biodiversity
and encourage sustainable food production." The programme
lists policy objectives intended to achieve this strategic
aim:
* reducing the regulatory burden on farmers by moving to
a risk-based system of regulation and developing a system
of extra support for hill farmers
* introducing measures to protect wildlife and promote green
spaces and wildlife corridors in order to halt the loss of
habitats and restore biodiversity
* investigating ways to share with livestock keepers the
responsibility for preparing and dealing with disease outbreaks
* introducing a carefully managed policy of badger control
in areas with high and persistent levels of bovine TB
* promoting high standards of animal welfare
* ensuring food procured by government departments meets British
standards of production wherever this can be achieved without
increasing overall cost
* creating a presumption in favour of sustainable development
in the planning system
* bringing forward a motion on a free vote for a repeal of
the Hunting Act.
It is notable that the programme does not mention CAP reform
or specific CAP policies at all, and this is also the case
for the Europe section of the programme. Policy differences
between the Conservative party and the Liberal Democratic
parties are at their greatest over Europe, so this section
is very carefully worded to satisfy both Conservative Euro
sceptics and LibDem Europhiles.
The most relevant aspects for agriculture are:
* ensuring that Britain does not enter the Euro
* supporting further enlargement of the EU
* strongly defending the UK's national interests in the forthcoming
EU budget negotiations and agreeing that the EU budget should
only focus on those areas where the EU can add value.
If one assumes that the coalition government believes that
the EU cannot 'add value' in agriculture, it would mean that
the Conservative policy of trimming the CAP budget as much
as possible will be retained within the coalition
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