Jim Paice is appointed agriculture minister

LOCAL MP Jim Paice has been appointed DEFRA minister of state for agriculture.

His appointment was confirmed by the government department using the micro-blogging website Twitter on Thursday (13 May).

The Suffolk-born Tory MP has represented the constituency of South-East Cambridgeshire since 1987. After attending school at Framlingham College, he spent two years working on farms before attending Writtle Agricultural College, Essex.

An active member of the Young Farmers movement in his younger days, Mr Paice was chairman of the organisation’s agricultural policy committee. For eight years before his election, he was director of a training and management development company owned by a large farmer-owned business.

Three years after entering Parliament, Mr Paice was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Baroness Trumpington at the Ministry of Agriculture. He was later promoted to PPS to John Gummer as Minister of Agriculture and then Secretary of State for the Environment.

After the 1997 general election, Mr Paice was appointed opposition spokesman on agriculture and has remained on the Tory front bench ever since. He was promoted to Shadow Secretary of State for Agriculture and Rural Affairs in September 2004.

Well-known across the region, Mr Paice’s parliamentary interests include the racing industry as well as farming, forestry and the countryside.