Emily Miles
Biography
Emily Miles was appointed Director General for Food, Biosecurity and Trade at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in September 2024.
She leads Defra’s work on the food system, trade with the EU and the rest of the world, farming, biosecurity for animals and plants including at the border, and animal welfare. She also line manages the chief executives of the Animal and Plant Health Agency, Rural Payments Agency and Veterinary Medicines Directorate.
She was Chief Executive of the Food Standards Agency between September 2019 to September 2024, overseeing food safety and consumer confidence in the food system in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. She previously worked in Defra coordinating work on the domestic consequences of Brexit.
Previous roles have included Director of Policing at the Home Office; leading the programme to clear the UK’s historic asylum caseload backlog; and leading the work to close the National Policing Improvement Agency and set up the College of Policing. In 2015 she led a review of government policy to tackle the illicit economy for Prime Minister David Cameron, in the Cabinet Office. She was a policy advisor on home affairs to Prime Minister Tony Blair between 2002 and 2005.
She is the author of ‘Collaborative Working’, published by the Institute for Government, and has been both a Whitehall Fellow at the Institute for Government and a Winston Churchill Fellow for the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust.
Between 1999 and 2017 she was a trustee for the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, including a stint as vice-chair.
Emily has graduated from the Major Projects Leadership Academy at the Oxford Said Business School. She holds a Masters in the international law of armed conflict and international criminal justice from the University of Nottingham. Her first degree was from the University of Cambridge, in English.
Previous roles
- Chief Executive of the Food Standards Agency (FSA, September 2019 to September 2024)
- Acting Director General, EU Exit Delivery Group, Defra (April 2019 to September 2019)
- Director, EU Exit Domestic and Constitutional Affairs Directorate, Defra (April 2018 to April 2019)
- Group Director of Strategy, Defra (November 2015 to April 2018)
- Director, Projects, Economic and Domestic Secretariat, Cabinet Office (March 2014 to November 2015)
Previous roles in government
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Director General for Europe, international and constitution group