Caroline Spelman

Caroline Spelman is the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Food and biotech lobbying history

Caroline Spelman is the co-founder and former director of Spelman Cormack and Associates, a food and biotech lobbying firm. As at May 2010 the firm remains in the hands of her husband. Spelman set up the firm with her husband, Mark Spelman, in 1989.

A Guardian report said:

The Sunlight Centre said it had forwarded a letter about a possible conflict of interest in Spelman's appointment to the permanent secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – the department Spelman now heads.

"Her husband, Mark Spelman, remains a director of the company still trading under the secretary of state's name in sectors closely related to issues for which she is responsible," the letter said. "Given that the company is still using her maiden name to trade, a name by which she would have been known when active in farming politics in the 1980s, this is clearly of public interest."

According to Companies House, the company address was also transferred from Spelman's constituency home, where it was registered until May last year – around the same time she also transferred over company shares to her husband and resigned her directorship.

According to her biography on the Greenwise website:

She worked for six years in the sugar beet industry and was sugar beet commodity secretary for the National Farmers Union (NFU) in the 1980s. She was research fellow for the Centre for European Agricultural Studies at the University of Kent and has written a book on biofuels. She co-owns Spelman Cormack & Associates, a food and biotechnology business, with her husband.

Affiliations

• National Farmers Union - former sugar beet commodity secretary in the 1980s
• Westminster Foundation for Democracy

External Resources

• Jo Adetunji, Caroline Spelman faces questions over close links to agriculture lobbying, The Guardian, 15 May 2010.