Benn, Hilary James Wedgwood (1953– )

British Labour politician, secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs from June 2007. The son of the left-wing former Labour cabinet minister, Tony Benn, he shares his father's passion to reduce economic and social inequality, but his greater pragmatism enabled him to hold posts in Labour governments from 2001.

A minister for prisons and probation 2002–03, he returned to the Department for International Development, where he had been an undersecretary of state 2001–02 and became the secretary of state in October 2003. In a cabinet reshuffle by new prime minister Gordon Brown in June 2007, Benn moved to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, vowing to tackle the issue of climate change.

Born in London, into a political family, he studied Russian and East European Studies at the University of Sussex. After university, he worked as a trade-union research and policy officer. He remarried in 1982 after his first wife had died from cancer in 1979, aged only 26. He was deputy leader of Ealing Borough Council 1986–90. After unsuccessfully standing for Parliament in 1983 and 1987, he became an MP in 1999, winning a by-election for the Leeds Central constituency.