Nanny in trousers

Spectator, The, May 18, 2002 by Aslet, Clive

Margaret Beckett tells Clive Aslet why she sees herself as an international statesperson (with special responsibilities for hunting)

IT's a grand life. In the morning, I'm in a market in Cannes being shown by the chef of the Palme d'Or how to choose asparagus; in the evening, I'm sipping Chablis in Margaret Beckett's oakily Edwardian office overlooking the tree-tops of the Embankment. Reading the newspaper on the aeroplane, I notice that a horse called Save the Planet is running in the four o'clock at York. As I drive through Pimlico, I have to stop for a fox. In Pimlico!

These may seem to be disparate events, but in the incredible oneness of life they are connected. I should say in the incredible oneness of Mrs Beckett's life, for, as queen of the new super-ministry of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defray, it is she who presides over our food system (it could be more local, like the French), over Britain's contribution to saving the planet, and over such annoyingly domestic issues as hunting.

For a small ministry, which civil servants regard as an elephants' graveyard, it is a huge brief. This being the government that it is, what some of us might have expected to be a largely national remit - sorting out the woes of British farmers - turns out to be the reverse. Even Mrs Beckett sounds slightly surprised as she explains, `We are one of the main international departments.' She is a trooper, but admits to finding the amount of travel to be `more than is entirely comfortable in this particular year'. Kyoto protocol negotiations, the start of the mid-term review of the Common Agricultural Policy, the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg; all this means that if you mention something like hunting, this otherwise unflappable politician gets irritable. She has delegated the legislation to Alun Michael, and that is that.

`We have made it plain that the principles on which the legislation will be based will be utility and cruelty.' The object of the six-month consultation period (strange, given that Lord Burns has already consulted widely for his report) is `to encourage people to contribute on thinking around how you give effective legislation to those principles'. Aha, that presupposes that there will indeed be legislation. And, if utility and cruelty are the criteria, doesn't the Burns report state quite clearly that hunting with dogs is essential in some areas, and less likely to cause prolonged suffering than most other methods of fox control? 'I never presuppose anything,' she says, referring me to Mr Michael as `the person who is dealing with the detail of it'.

Mrs Beckett is arguably the best-dressed Cabinet member. Wearing a leprechaun-- green trouser suit and floral blouse, she could have stepped out of one of Cicely Mary Barker's books of flower fairies. This image is banished when she starts talking about her department. In the Blair manner, it is topline only. Out of the chaos of the newly invented Defra, which has forced the demoralised, defeated civil servants of the old Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Maff) to embrace a radical new cadre from the old Department of the Environment, she has had to create order. Look too long at the detail, and she is likely to sink back into the primordial swamp. Order is what Mrs Beckett likes. A metallurgist by training, her departmental skills are those of the technocrat, in the French style. Her no-nonsense Lancashire voice brings to mind nanny, putting away the toys that have been left lying around the nursery; a thankless task, but someone has to do it.

The trouble is that some of the playthings will not stay where she has put them. With half a million people likely to take to the streets in September, hunting keeps jumping out of the toy box, however firmly she and Alun Michael sit on the lid. As for foot-and-mouth, it is like trying to tidy away Lego: there are always more pieces coming to light. The horrors of foot-and-mouth were made worse by the incompetence of Maff officials. On entering office, Mrs Beckett introduced the Animal Health Bill, which gives those very officials (now resident in Defra) what the veteran Home Office peer Lord Ferrers describes as 'Hitlerite' powers to destroy any animal on nothing more than the say-so of a magistrate, without the owner having the right to be represented or to appeal. This outrageous Bill has stalled in the Lords, and Mrs Beckett blames this, disingenuously, on Tory peers making a protest about hunting. Even more disingenuously, she neglects to say that the Bill's provisions have been included, unnoticed, in a statutory instrument that it will be almost impossible to prevent from becoming law this week. I found this out only after the interview had ended. A case, I think, of Mrs Beckett having been economical with the truth.

For a woman who likes structure, she has created a department that is strangely offbalance. There may well be a logic to merging environment and agriculture: in future, farmers are more likely to be subsidised for producing birdsong and scenery than for raising crops. On the other hand, as Mrs Beckett must know from her climate-change marathons at Bonn and Marrakesh, the key to long-term sustainability lies in planning. But responsibility for planning has floated off into the nether reaches of the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR).