Ministerial role: Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Victoria Prentis)

Responsibilities include:

• COVID-19 issues related to food for the vulnerable, farming and fisheries Fisheries and Fisheries Bill
• Farming including Agriculture Bill, Environmental Land Management, the Common Agricultural Policy and pesticides
• Food including the National Food Strategy, production, growth, skills and apprenticeships
• Science and innovation, including GMOs and gene editing
• Better regulation and the department’s Secondary legislation programme
• Transition period activity, leading to our future relations with the EU
• Lead for Rural Payments Agency (RPA), Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), FERA Science, Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), Marine Management Organisation (MMO)

Victoria Prentis was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on 14 February 2020.

She was elected as the Conservative MP for Banbury in May 2015.

Political career

Victoria served on the Justice Select Committee from 2015 to 2019, the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments from 2015 to 2017, and as a lay member on the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art from 2019.

Victoria also served as Principal Private Secretary to the Attorney General from 2019 to 2020, to the Leader of the House of Commons from 2017 to 2019, and to Junior Ministers at the Department for Transport from 2016 to 2017.

Career outside politics

For seventeen years Victoria was a lawyer for the Treasury Solicitors’ Department and headed up the government’s Justice and Security team. Her responsibilities included providing advice on military, prisons and national security matters and representing the government in court.