Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast.

We are the charity and think tank focused on achieving ambitious leadership for the environment.

Today, on World Environment Day, we are delighted to be joined by Environment Minister Rebecca Pao,

currently serving as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State

at DEFRA. She has long been a champion of environmental issues.

Measures through the Environment Bill will mean that other departments, as they consider

bringing in policies, will all need to take account of the environment.

I'm delighted on World Environment Day to welcome Government Minister for the Natural Environment

Rebecca Pau to the podcast. Rebecca has been MP for Taunton Dean since 2015. Welcome, Rebecca.

And environmental issues have been a long-standing interest and passion of yours haven't they?

Yes, well thank you so much for inviting me on World Environment Day to take part in this podcast

and obviously we have very close relations with your groups and all the people who come under the Green Alliance

so I'm very pleased to be talking to you. And yes, I've been

mad about the environment and all issues that relate to it. And when I say the environment,

I mean everything. I actually mean farming, agriculture, horticulture, nature, the environment.

I mean it all because I grew up on a farm in Somerset, where I worked in my gap year and I worked

as a child. And then I went to university and I

studied a rural environment degree. It was very wide, very specific, but it brought in all of

those areas I've just mentioned. And I would say, I think it was pretty ahead of its time,

which is not to give away my age, but when I came out of university, I literally wanted to save the world because I was a

strident friends of the earth follower with Jonathan Porritt. But of course there were no jobs.

There was a massive recession. And there were no jobs in the environment anyway. And bit by bit by

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