Peter Robert Henry Mond, 4th Baron Melchett (24 February 1948 – 29 August 2018), also known as Peter Melchett, was an English farmer, jurist and politician. He succeeded to the title of Baron Melchett in 1973.

Early life

The son of the British Steel Corporation chairman Sir Julian Mond (later the 3rd Baron Melchett) and writer Sonia Melchett (now Sinclair), and great-grandson of Imperial Chemical Industries founder Sir Alfred Mond, 1st Baron Melchett, Mond grew up on his family's 890 acre Courtyard Farm at Ringstead, Norfolk. and at the Institute of Psychiatry (1971–1973).

Political career

Lord Melchett succeeded to his titles in 1973 at the age of 25, after his father died of a heart attack.

When Labour won re-election in October 1974, he was made a Lord-in-waiting (House of Lords whip) by Harold Wilson, working in the Department of the Environment as a junior minister under Anthony Crosland. Through the committee, he oversaw a report that recommended "rock on taxpayers’ expense," causing him to be nicknamed "Lord Pop". Maurice Hayes, Northern Irish civil servant, wrote about working with Melchett, stating that:

One such issue was a case in which Melchett helped to secure a pardon for a young girl who had been convicted and imprisoned for killing her father, who had sexually abused and assaulted the girl's mother and turned his attention on her younger sister. In his book, Hayes also said:

In the late 1970s, Melchett was the first chair of a (short-lived) Legalise Cannabis Campaign. For over 30 years, he was a patron of Prisoners Abroad, a registered charity that supports British citizens who are imprisoned overseas.

After Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 election, Melchett served on the Opposition Front Bench in the House of Lords from 1979 to 1981, covering the environment and wildlife, and leading for the Opposition on the Wildlife and Countryside Bill, which became an Act in 1981. was appointed to the board of the charity in 1986, and took up the position of Executive Director of Greenpeace UK in 1989. Melchett spent a night in police custody and then a night in Norwich Prison before being released on bail. The case came to court in 2000 when Melchett and his 27 codefendants were acquitted of theft and criminal damage. Burson-Marsteller in the USA had formerly been PR consultants for the Monsanto Company, and Melchett stood down from the Greenpeace International Board following accusation that his employment with Burson-Marsteller compromised his integrity.

He was Policy Director at the Soil Association from 2002 until his death in 2018. During this time, he organised work on antibiotic and welfare abuse in farm animals, and campaigns against pesticides. He chaired the Food for Life Partnership, a successful school food programme, as well as its Food for Life Served Here awards which encouraged freshly prepared school meals free from trans fats, sweeteners and additives, with ingredients from sustainable and ethical sources. an alliance of health, environmental and animal-welfare groups – coordinated by non-governmental organisations Compassion in World Farming, as policy director for the Soil Association campaigning to stop the overuse of antibiotics in livestock. The Alliance was founded in 2009 and has helped put the issue of antibiotic resistance at the centre of farm policy. By 2018, large cuts in antibiotic use in British farming had been achieved, and the European Union had agreed to plans to ban routine farm antibiotic use.

He received an honorary doctorate from Newcastle University in 2013.

Panel and board memberships

Melchett was a member of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology (1981–1985), a member of the BBC's Rural Affairs Committee (2005–2018), and declared in a BBC Radio broadcast for Desert Island Discs that he had deprived his son Jay (who farms at the family farm in Ringstead) of the right to succeed him as 5th Baron Melchett, of Landford in the County of Southampton, and 5th Baronet of Hartford Hill in the County of Cheshire, because his son was born out of wedlock, which means the extinction of the barony and of the baronetcy upon his death.

Melchett became a vegetarian early in his life

|image = Coat of arms of Mond, Baron Melchett.svg

|image size = 250px

|notes = Coat of arms of the Mond family

|coronet = A coronet of a Baron

|crest = A Demi-Bear holding between the paws a Fountain both proper.

|Quarterly = 1st and 4th, Gules a Demi-Lion rampant argent between in chief a Decrescent and an Increscent and in base a Crescent all Or on a Chief Argent an Eagle displayed between two Mullets Sable (Mond); 2nd and 3rd, Azure on a Pile between three Mullets Argent an Eagle displayed Sable (Lowenthal).

| escutcheon = Quarterly: 1st and 4th, Gules a Demi-Lion rampant argent between in chief a Decrescent and an Increscent and in base a Crescent all Or on a Chief Argent an Eagle displayed between two Mullets Sable (Mond); 2nd and 3rd, Azure on a Pile between three Mullets Argent an Eagle displayed Sable (Lowenthal).

|supporters = Dexter: a Doctor of Science of the University of Oxford holding in the exterior hand a Chemical Measure Glass; Sinister: a Labourer holding in the exterior hand a Pick resting on the shoulder, all proper.

|motto = Make Yourself Necessary

References

  • Profile, Huffington Post: retrieved 21 January 2015
  • Greenpeace: Peter Melchett 18 January 2002
  • British Government Ministers, 1970–2009
  • Welcome To Courtyard Farm | Ringstead | Norfolk