John was a Conservative cabinet Minister under both Margaret Thatcher and John Major. He has sixteen years of ministerial experience which means that in two hundred years there are only five others who have held office for so long a period. Friends of the Earth called him ‘the best Environment Secretary we’ve ever had’.
The BBC unprecedentedly awarded him the title, ‘Parliamentarian who did most for the for the environment internationally’ in their Green Awards in 1995 and 1996. After leaving office he was awarded the Medal of Honour by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds - the UK’s largest environmental organisation. He is the only government minister ever to have received this award.
As Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (1989-1993), he was the first MAFF Minister to take seriously the effects of agriculture policy on wildlife and the countryside. He recognised that European agricultural policy had to be made greener if agriculture were to be sustainable in the long-term. During his time at MAFF he played an important part in the negotiations for the GATT round on behalf of the European Community , chairing the Council of Agriculture Ministers.
As the UK Environment Secretary (1993-1997) he played a key role in the Convention on Climate Change meetings in Berlin and Geneva. The secretary-general of the United Nations named him as one of a small Committee of Distinguished Persons advising on Habitat II (UN Conference on Human Settlements), and in 1996 he was elected Chairman of the Environment Committee of the OECD by his fellow Ministers.
He was a significant player in the reform of the UN Environment Programme and in the Commission on Sustainable Development. When the Labour Party took office, John was included in the United Kingdom’s delegation to the Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly (the Earth Summit +5) and subsequently to the Climate Change Conference in Kyoto and Buenos Aires.
John Gummer became a Peer in June 2010 and took the title Lord Deben.