Chris Smith (UK politician)

This article is part of the Spinwatch Fracking Portal and project

Chris Smith (Lord Smith of Finsbury) is a former UK Labour Party politician and minister, and a former chairman of the UK Environment Agency. He was made a life peer in the UK House of Lords in 2005.

In October 2014 Smith was appointed head of an 'independent' Task Force on Shale Gas, funded by industry, to look into the risks and benefits of fracking in the UK.

Smith is also currently chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority.

Background

Smith was born in 1951 in Watford, England to mathematics teacher Gladys and Whitehall civil servant Colin, and lived there until he was 10, when the family relocated to Edinburgh as his father was transferred to the Scottish Office.

Smith began his political career as a councillor in Islington between 1978 to 1983, where he also chaired the housing committee and was chief Labour whip. In 1997, when Labour wan their election, he was made Secretary of State for heritage, the department that was later renamed Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Smith opposed military intervention and the war in Iraq. In 2003, he lost his job as minister for Culture, Media and Sport after a series of blunders surrounding the national lottery and sporting events.

From 2003 Smith was Director of the Clore Leadership Programme, which aims to help develop a new generation of leaders for the cultural sector in the UK. He stepped down from this position in July 2008, in order to become chairman of the Environment Agency. Since July 2007 he has also been the Chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority. From 1992 to 2007 he was President of SERA.

Involvement in the British American Project

Chris Smith is a member of the British American Project (BAP), an organisation to foster closer links between the UK and US. Smith commented on the BAP: "The Project is one of the most valuable and eye-opening experiences I have ever had. It gives me a wonderful perspective on international relations, and an unprecedented opportunity to mix with a highly stimulating and knowledgeable group."

Smith won respect from the left-wing Labour backbenchers by opposing military intervention and the War in Iraq. What fostered this respect from the backbenchers was that the rejection of the plan to go to war was not done as an act of genuine opposition to the proposed invasion. He had chosen to stay true to his Labour beliefs, as opposed to some members of the New Labour cabinet who had clearly been influenced by the British American Project and its neo-liberal agenda .

In 2003, he lost his job as minister for Culture, Media and Sport after a series of blunders surrounding the national lottery and sporting events, but was given a life peerage in 2005.

GM crops supporter

In February 2001 Smith made a speech to the National Farmers Union in which he extolled the virtues of GM crops. Jonathon Porritt commented in his blog:

He stressed that he was speaking in a 'personal capacity', despite the fact that he was invited as Chair of the Environment Agency, and presumably had plenty to talk about in that capacity which might have been of more immediate interest to farmers.

Reflecting on this, it seems to have become a mandatory test of credibility for people like Chris to declare their enthusiasm for GM. The pro-GM lobby has done a fantastic job in persuading the media and politicians that even the most modest GM-scepticism is tantamount to extreme science-hating emotionalism.

To express any reservations about the notional sustainability benefits of current GM crops, let alone about the massively hyped potential benefits of future GM products, is to open oneself up to the charge of debilitating technophobia. Shades here of George Bush beating up his NATO allies over the Iraq war: "If you’re not with us, you're against us".

Sorry, Chris, but that's really not the deal. Interviewed on Radio 4's Farming Today, he suggested that anti-GM campaigners would really have to 'move on' in terms of their opposition on both environmental and health grounds – given that the balance of the available evidence would appear to indicate a relatively clean bill of health for GM on both counts.

If only it were that easy. Once judgement about ‘the balance of the evidence’ depends largely on where that evidence comes from, and even pro-GM advocates are very uneasy about the stranglehold that the big biotech companies have over access to data and transparency of the data used by regulators. I wonder how content Chris is, as Chair of the Environment Agency, about the quality of that evidence, and the credence that should be attached to it?

Furthermore, I wonder what Chris means by 'environmental concerns' in this context? I’d be astonished if he is not worried about the biggest environmental concern of all: the fact that even the next generation of GM ‘solutions’ promise little if anything in terms of reducing the dependence of modern intensive agriculture on fossil fuels and hydro-carbon based inputs. On broad sustainability and governance grounds, GM-scepticism still seems to me to be the most appropriate response to the latest surge of evangelism for all things GM. But balance in this debate seems to be entirely lacking. As the IAASTD (International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, Technology for Development) Report in 2008 so eloquently pointed out, there are so many things that can and should be done right now to address issues of food security and increased yields without casting all our eggs in the GM basket. (Don't ask, incidentally, what happened to the IAASTD Report, which has, to all extents and purposes, 'disappeared'. Some would say precisely because it was so sceptical about GM.)

But for reasons I still can't fathom, people like Chris get hugely over-excited about GM whilst remaining resolutely underwhelmed by all those other aspects of sustainable food production and distribution that would make a far bigger difference to an infinitely greater number of people in a far shorter period of time.

This is clearly not a rational process, whatever GM advocates may say. Indeed, I'd go so far as to suggest that Chris is only the latest 'big name' to have given into the phenomenon of what I can only describe as 'GM fetishism'.

President Sarkozy recently accused his fellow world leaders of having given in to 'GDP fetishism'. By which he meant (I assume!) that their obsessive preoccupation with GDP at the expense of every other measure of prosperity, wellbeing and quality of life, was seriously impairing their judgement.

By the same token, it is clear to me that the elite of today's farming establishment (plus a few misguided Greenies) have clearly given into a form of GM fetishism, which overshadows every other measure of innovation, sustainable yield improvement and resource efficiency in farming today.

I am sure Chris doesn't see himself as a GM fetishist, but then he has also converted to the pro-nuclear cause over the last few years, and I have noticed that this is rich 'two for one' territory: go nuclear and throw in GM evangelism for good measure. Or vice-versa. That, it would seem, is the only way to demonstrate one's serious scientific credentials these days.

Nuclear supporter

On 23 February 2009 Smith was reported by Steve Connor of The Independent as being one of "four leading environmentalists who are now lobbying in favour of nuclear power". The Independent article stated:

The one-time opponents of nuclear power, who include the former head of Greenpeace, have told The Independent that they have now changed their minds over atomic energy because of the urgent need to curb emissions of carbon dioxide.

Quotes

On the British American Project:

"The Project is one of the most valuable and eye-opening experiences I have ever had. It gives me a wonderful perspective on international relations, and an unprecedented opportunity to mix with a highly stimulating and knowledgeable group."

Overseas trips

Visit to Chicago and St Louis, 8-12 September 2014, as part of a small parliamentary delegation funded by the British American Parliamentary Group from funds from sponsors previously declared (see register of All-Party Groups).

Affiliations

• Vice President of the Christian Socialist Movement

Resources

See: Fracking lobbying firms

• Melissa Jones and Andy Rowell, Access all areas: Westminster's (vast) fracking lobby exposed, 29 April 2015.