Environment and Climate Change Committee

9 septembre 2026

The committee formally opens the session, takes declarations of interest, and hears from Dame Helen Ghosh and Natalie Prosser on the OEP’s mandate, flat-budget constraints, three‑year strategy refresh, and core policy priorities across farming, water, marine, Northern Ireland nutrients and chemicals, including how the OEP works with existing regulators and the Climate Change Committee.

Environment and Climate Change Committee

00:06 - 01:26

Intervenant 2

Good morning and welcome to the Lords Committee on the Environment and Climate Change. For this morning's session, we will be hearing from the Office for Environmental Protection, and I'm delighted to have with us Dame Helen Ghosh, the newly appointed chair of the OEP, and its CEO, Natalie Prosser. And we look forward to hearing your evidence. Before we start, may I remind everyone that the session will be webcast live on Parliament TV and that a transcript will be taken and made public. Witnesses will have an opportunity to review the transcript and, if necessary, make very minor amendments.

Members are reminded that they should declare any relevant interests the first time they speak, and this of course applies equally to all witnesses, which I don't think maybe is so relevant in today's case. I will take the opportunity here to say that I'm a director of Peers for the Planet. So, before we start, may I come to you, Dame Helen, and ask you to introduce yourself.

01:26 - 02:49

Intervenant 11

Thank you very much. So, I'm Helen Ghosh, became chair of the Office for Environmental Protection on the 1st of June this year. My previous career was 30 years in the civil service in a variety of departments, latterly as permanent secretary at Defra and then at the Home Office. I moved from there into the NGO sector and became the Director General of the National Trust for almost six years, and then from there moved to my immediately previous role as Master of Balliol College at Oxford University. In all these roles, in various ways, I had contact with the issues, the environmental, natural resource issues that concern the Office for Environmental Protection.

And therefore it's a delight to be in this role in this organization, which I think can have a, has already had and can continue to have a real, a real and measurable impact on the outcomes for the natural environment and resources. So it's been a pleasure, and I have to say my first two months have reinforced my view that it is a great privilege to be carrying out the role.

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