Former NFU president Minette Batters honoured with a peerage

Immediate past NFU president Minette Batters and former Defra secretary Therese Coffey have both been granted honours following the dissolution of parliament.

Mrs Batters is being made a baroness and follows in the wake of previous NFU leaders in receiving an honorary title, one which takes her to the House of Lords.

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She was the first female president of the NFU, being elected to that post in 2018 and serving three two-year terms before standing down in February 2024.

Commenting on her peerage, Mrs Batters first welcomed the fact that it was for a cross-bench role, rather than for a particular political party.

“I’ve always been apolitical, so taking a party side is something I could never have done,” she said.

“But I am absolutely delighted – especially for the people I have worked with at the NFU over 10 years. This is certainly as much credit to them as it is to me.”

Mrs Batters said she expected to take up her position in the Lords after the summer recess.

“There is a massive agenda to influence,” she said. “You only have to look at the manifestos to see that there is a mountain to climb for farming.

“If I can continue to influence that agenda, I will. Farming’s voice has not had the weight behind it, either in the Commons or the Lords, so I hope that can change.”

Damehood

Election night was undoubtedly a bittersweet one for former Defra secretary Therese Coffey.

At the start of the night she was awarded a “damehood of the Order of the British Empire” in recognition of her political and public service over many years.

But in the early hours of Friday morning, it emerged that she had narrowly lost her seat as Conservative MP for Suffolk Coastal to Labour.

Dr Coffey won 14,602 votes, being overtaken by Jenny Riddell-Carpenter for Labour with 15,672 votes. Reform UK candidate Matthew Jackson came third with 7,850 votes.

Suffolk Coastal was created in 1983 by combining of the constituencies of Sudbury and Woodbridge with Eye. It has been Conservative in every election, until now.

Another former Defra secretary to receive a damehood was Margaret Beckett, who held the post from 2001 to 2006, but left the Commons in May of this year.