Lord Deben, as the long-standing MP John Gummer, held ministerial positions in the Thatcher and Major Governments, most notably as Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and then Secretary of State for the Environment. He was a personal friend of the recently deceased founder of Autonomy, Invoke Capital and Darktrace—Mike Lynch—who had been extradited to the United States of America in 2023 to stand trial accused of defrauding Hewlett Packard. Lord Deben is campaigning to change the Extradition Act 2003, on the basis that it does not offer a level playing field between the UK and the USA.
Upon leaving the House of Commons, Gummer was ennobled as Lord Deben and spent just over a decade as the Chairman of the Climate Change Committee. Now, Lord Deben is a trustee of Cool Earth and the Chairman of Sancroft International, a sustainability consultancy, which he established in 1997, the same year he left the Department of the Environment.