The phrase Her Majesty's Government (His Majesty's Government during the reign of a male monarch) is a formal term referring to the governments of various jurisdictions within the Commonwealth realms. In use since at least the height of the British Empire, the phrase has been inherited and integrated into the countries that emerged from that polity.

In the British Empire, the term His (or Her) Majesty's Government was originally only used by the imperial government in London. As the Empire developed into the Commonwealth of Nations, the former Dominions came to be seen as realms of the sovereign equal in status to the United Kingdom, and, from the 1920s and 1930s, the form His Majesty's Government in... began to be used by the United Kingdom and Dominion governments to differentiate between independent jurisdictions, such as His Majesty's Government in the Irish Free State. Colonial, state, and provincial governments, on the other hand, continued to use the lesser title Government of [region], and eventually the phrase used in the former Dominions altered to mirror that of the UK, becoming, for example, Her Majesty's Australian Government.

Sir John Rex Beddington, CMG, FRS (born 13 October 1945) is the Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government and Professor of Applied Population Biology at Imperial College London.

Beddington went to school at the independent Monmouth School in south-east Wales, close to the English border. He then attended the London School of Economics, gaining a BSc in Economics, and later an MSc. In 1973 he was awarded a PhD degree from the University of Edinburgh.

From 1968 to 1971 he was a research assistant at the University of Edinburgh. From 1971 to 1984 he was a lecturer in Population Biology at the University of York.

He joined Imperial in 1984, was promoted to Reader in Applied Population Biology in 1987 and was appointed Professor of Applied Population Biology there in 1991.

Beddington has been a specialist in the economics and biology of sustainable management of renewable resources, and has previously advised UK ministers on scientific and environmental issues. He has chaired the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ science advisory panel and the Defence Scientific Advisory Committee, and is a member of the Natural Environmental Research Council. He has also advised the European Commission and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.