The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is the government department responsible for environmental protection, food production and standards, agriculture, fisheries and rural communities in the United Kingdom. Concordats set out agreed frameworks for co-operation between it and the Scottish Executive,^[2] the Cabinet of the National Assembly for Wales^[3] and with representatives from the Northern Ireland Assembly,^[4] which have devolved responsibilities for these matters in their respective nations. Defra also leads for Britain at the EU on agricultural, fisheries and environment matters and in other international negotiations on sustainable development and climate change, although a new Department of Energy and Climate Change was created on 3 October 2008 to take over the last responsibility.

Creation[link]

It was formed in June 2001 under the leadership of Margaret Beckett, when the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) was merged with part of the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) and with a small part of the Home Office. The department was created after the perceived failure of MAFF to deal adequately with an outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease. The Department had about 9 000 core personnel, as of January 2008^[update].^[5] The Department's main building is Nobel House on Smith Square, SW1.

In October 2008, the climate team at Defra was merged with the energy team from the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) to create the Department of Energy and Climate Change, headed by Ed Miliband.^[6]

Ministers[link]

The Defra Ministers are as follows: ^[7]

The Permanent Secretary is Bronwyn Hill. ^[9]

Responsibilities[link]

Defra is responsible for British Government policy in the following areas^[10]

• Adaptation to global warming
• Agriculture
• Air quality
• Animal health and animal welfare
• Biodiversity
• Conservation
• Chemicals and pesticides
• Fisheries
• Flooding
• Food
• Forestry
• Hunting
• Inland waterways
• Land management
• Marine policy
• National parks
• Noise
• Plant health
• Rural development
• Sustainable development
• Waste management
• Water management

Some policies apply to England alone due to devolution, while others are not devolved and therefore apply Britain as a whole.

Executive agencies[link]

The department's executive agencies are:^[11]

• Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (formed on 1 April 2011 by a merger of Animal Health and the Veterinary Laboratories Agency,^[12] Animal Health had launched on 2 April 2007 and was formerly the State Veterinary Service)^[13]
• Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science
• Food and Environment Research Agency (until April 2009 was called the Central Science Laboratory)
• Rural Payments Agency
• Veterinary Medicines Directorate

Key delivery partners[link]

The department's key delivery partners are:^[14]

• British Waterways
• Covent Garden Market Authority
• Environment Agency
• Forestry Commission (a non-ministerial government department including Forest Enterprise and Forest Research)
• Marine Management Organisation (launched on 1 April 2010, incorporates the former Marine and Fisheries Agency)^[15]
• Natural England (launched on 11 October 2006, formerly English Nature and elements of the Countryside Agency and the Rural Development Service)^[16]

A full list of departmental delivery and public bodies may be found on the Defra website.^[17]

Defra in the English regions[link]

A Countryside Stewardship Scheme sign near a new stile a Cratfield, Suffolk

Policies for environment, food and rural affairs are delivered in the regions by Defra's executive agencies and delivery bodies, in particular Natural England, the Rural Payments Agency, Animal Health and the Marine Management Organisation. Increasingly, a range of policies are communicated locally by Government Offices for English Regions.^[18]

Defra provides grant aid to the following flood and coastal erosion risk management operating authorities:

• Environment Agency
• Internal drainage boards
• Local authorities

Aim and strategic priorities[link]

Defra's overarching aim is sustainable development, which is defined as "development which enables all people throughout the world to satisfy their basic needs and enjoy a better quality of life without compromising the quality of life of future generations." The Secretary of State wrote in a letter to the Prime Minister that he saw Defra’s mission as enabling a move toward what the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has called "one planet living".^[19]

Under this overarching aim, Defra has five strategic priorities:^[20]

• Climate change and energy.
• Sustainable consumption and production, including responsibility for the National Waste Strategy.
• Protecting the countryside and natural resource protection.
• Sustainable rural communities.
• A sustainable farming and food sector including animal health and welfare.

See also[link]

• Cattle Health Initiative
• Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (Northern Ireland)
• Energy policy in the United Kingdom
• Energy use and conservation in the United Kingdom
• Environmental contract
• List of atmospheric dispersion models
• National Bee Unit
• National Collection of Plant Pathogenic Bacteria
• New Technologies Demonstrator Programme
• Scottish Executive Environment and Rural Affairs Department
• UK Dispersion Modelling Bureau
• United Kingdom budget
• Waste Implementation Programme

References[link]

External links[link]

• Defra's official website
• Fera - Executive agency of DEFRA
• National Collection of PLant Pathogenic Bacteria - Fera
• English Nature's website
• JNCC's website
• Defra's wiki for formulating an environmental contract

Video clips[link]

• DEFRA YouTube channel

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Lane Fox in 2011.

Martha Lane Fox (born 10 February 1973) is an English businesswoman and charity trustee, who has been engaged as a public servant chairperson on various e-commerce projects and investigations. A board member of Channel 4, mydeco.com ^[1] and Marks & Spencer, she co-founded Lastminute.com, an icon of the dotcom boom of the early 2000s.

Early life[link]

Born in Oxford, Lane Fox is the daughter of author and classical historian Robin Lane Fox. She was educated at Oxford High School, Westminster School and Magdalen College, Oxford, where she read ancient and modern history.^[2]

Business career[link]

After university she showed interest in acting and prison governorship but joined the consulting firm Spectrum, involved in IT and media companies. Her first project was for British Telecom called "What is the Internet ?", here she met fellow employee Brent Hoberman.

In 1998, Lane Fox and Hoberman founded Lastminute.com, an online travel and gift business that generated great publicity, becoming an icon of the UK internet boom and floating at the peak of the dot-com bubble.^[2] On 20 November 2003, it was announced that she would step down as managing director of Lastminute.com. The company survived the dotcom crash to be bought for £577m in 2005.^[3] Lane Fox's personal share holding at the time the company was bought was worth £13 million.^[2]

On 28 December 2003, it was revealed by The Sunday Telegraph that Lane Fox would become "right hand woman" of Galen Weston, owner of Selfridges, and take over the day-to-day running of the business.

In 2005, advertising executive Julian Douglas shared an idea of his with her about launching a Tokyo-esque private karaoke bar in London. Falling in love with the idea, together with Nick Thistleton she launched a private karaoke company Lucky Voice with a club in London's Soho.^[2] The company have seven bars countrywide, an online application, and an additional product to be used with computers.

In 2007 Lane Fox joined the board of Marks & Spencer as a non-executive director.^[2] She is also on the board of Channel 4. In 2007 Lane Fox joined the board of interior design and furniture website mydeco.com, the new start-up venture of her lastminute.com partner Brent Hoberman.

On 16 June 2009, she was appointed the UK Government's Digital Inclusion Champion to head a two year campaign ^[4] to make the British public more 'tech savvy'.^[5][6][7] She has argued that "I don't think you can be a proper citizen of our society in the future if you are not engaged online."^[8]

On 22 March 2010 her government role was expanded when it was announced that she would set up a new Digital Public Services Unit within the Cabinet Office. ^[9]

In June 2010, the new Government asked Lane Fox to expand her role as UK Digital Champion advising how online public services delivery can help to provide better, and more efficient services as well as getting more people online. She was invited to sit on Cabinet Office's Efficiency and Reform Board. In July 2010 David Cameron hosted an event at 10 Downing Street to celebrate her Manifesto for a Networked Nation - a challenge for people and organisations in every sector and every corner of the country to work together to inspire, encourage and support as many new people as possible to get online by the end of the Olympic year. By the beginning of 2011 the Race Online 2012 campaign had over 1000 partners pledging to reach almost 2 million adults.

Charity work[link]

Lane Fox is a strong and vocal advocate of causes such as human rights, women's rights and social justice. In 2007 she founded Antigone,^[10], a grant-making trust to support charities based in the UK.

She is a patron of Reprieve, a legal action charity, which made the news during its involvement in the release of UK resident Binyam Mohammed from Guantanamo Bay.^[2] Lane Fox is also a patron of Camfed, dedicated to fighting poverty, HIV and AIDS in rural Africa through the education of girls and young women.^[11]

Personal life[link]

Lane Fox lives in Marylebone, London, with her long term partner, television producer Chris Gorell Barnes.^[12]

In May 2004 she was severely injured in a car accident in the tourist resort of Essaouira in Morocco, and she was flown to England for treatment. She was discharged from hospital in December 2005 after recovering at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford and later at Wellington Hospital, a private hospital in London. She had skin grafts, and fractured bones were held in position with internal metal supports.^[2][13]

References[link]

External links[link]

• A BBC News interview with Martha Lane Fox
• A BBC News article about her stepping down as MD
• Lucky Voice Home online karaoke
• Race Online 2012, part of the digital inclusion initiative

Charlie Dimmock (born Charlotte Elouise Dimmock on 10 August 1966) is an English gardening expert and TV presenter. She was one of the team on Ground Force, a BBC gardening makeover programme.

Early years[link]

Dimmock is a former pupil of Wellow Primary School and The Mountbatten School in Romsey, Hampshire. Her father was a merchant seaman, and her mother Sue, ran her own clothes shop.^[1] When she was at school Charlie wanted to be a forensic scientist.

Career[link]

Dimmock first came to the public's attention in 1997, when she joined the BBC gardening series Ground Force. Dimmock met the producer/director of the series five years previously when she built a pond for the Meridian series, Grass Roots,.^[2] Dimmock, who is well-endowed, became known for going braless in all weathers.^[3]

Since then, she has presented such programmes as The Joy of Gardening and Charlie's Garden Army, as well as presenting coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show.^[4] In 2004, she appeared in the Channel 4 reality TV show, The Games. She has also appeared on American television, presenting a gardening slot on The Early Show on CBS.^[5] In September 2006, she appeared on the BBC's Celebrity MasterChef.^[6]

She has also published several gardening books, including the BBC Ground Force books 'Water Garden Workbook' and 'Container Gardening', as well as 'Enjoy Your Garden', a book on general gardening published in 2000. Dimmock wrote a weekly gardening column in the Mail on Sunday for many years, until January 2008.

In recent years, she has enjoyed some success with a local ITV Meridian series, River Walks, in which she walks along various rivers in Southern England, visiting landmarks and attractions along the way, as well as meeting people who live and work on the rivers. The third series was broadcast on ITV1 Meridian in January 2008.^[7]

Dimmock was also the President of the Television and Radio Industries Club (TRIC) from 2003 to 2004 and presented their annual Awards ceremony that year. In 2011, Dimmock joined the team of experts on ITV's Daybreak breakfast magazine show acting as gardening expert.

Dimmock was scheduled to appear in pantomime over Christmas 2011 at The Spa, Bridlington playing the Organic Fairy in Jack and the Beanstalk.

Personal life[link]

Dimmock's mother Sue Kennedy, 59; and her stepfather Rob, 58; were both killed in the tsunami caused by the December 2004 Asian earthquake.^[8][9]

Charity work[link]

In 2003, Dimmock competed in the Macmillan 4x4 UK Challenge charity event, raising the profile of the event considerably, which has gone on to raise over £100,000 each year for Macmillan Cancer Support.^[10]

She has also been involved in many other charity works, such as Dreamflight, a charity organisation for children with serious illnesses—that takes them to Florida, USA, for a "holiday of a lifetime".^{[citation needed]}

References[link]

External links[link]

• Charlie Dimmock at the Internet Movie Database
• Profile in Hello! Magazine