Ranil Jayawardena named as the new Defra secretary

Former minister for international trade, Ranil Jayawardena has taken on the role of environment secretary in Liz Truss’ new government, making him the seventh person to hold the position in the past 10 years.

Cornish MP George Eustice had held the post for over two years, having come from a farming background and been in environmental roles in government for more than a decade, including Defra minister of state from 2015-2020.

During the leadership race Mr Eustice is quoted by CornwallLive as saying: “There’s a couple of areas where I think [Rishi Sunak] has got a position that I am much more comfortable with than what I suspect will be the case with Liz Truss, and that’s really in a context of international trade. He’s made clear during this contest that he thinks we shouldn’t rush agreements, that we should get them right, and that we do need to uphold our food standards and animal welfare standards in those trade agreements.

“It is fair to say there were some challenges that I had getting Liz Truss to recognise the importance of animal welfare in particular and to make sure that we tried to reflect that in trade agreements. It’s not a secret really, but there was often quite a bit of tension between us trying to get animal welfare in particular recognised during those trade agreements.”

Ranil Jayawardena is Conservative MP for north east Hampshire. Before serving as a minister he was a member of the International Trade, Home Affairs, Procedure and Arms Export Controls Committees, and had been appointed by the speaker of the House of Commons to the Chairman’s Panel. He was also made deputy chairman of the Conservative Party by the prime minister.

Prior to his role in parliament he was a councillor, serving as deputy leader to the Borough of Basingstoke and Deane. He combined his local government role with working for Lloyds Banking Group plc and is a freeman of the City of London.