Born in 1952 in Glasgow, Jim moved to London in 1974 and joined the London Fire Brigade, leaving in 1997. 

Elected Labour MP for Poplar and Canning Town in 1997. 

Jim is married to Dr Sheila Fitzpatrick and has one son and one daughter from a previous marriage.

Jim is a devoted football fan and supports West Ham United, he also enjoys cricket, rugby and sports generally.  In addition to this he supports a number of charities.

Rupert Furness

Rupert Furness has worked in the Cleaner Fuels and Vehicles Division of the UK Department for Transport since January 2003. He has been responsible for advising DfT Ministers on a wide range of transport and environment issues, and now specialises in policy on biofuels. He heads up the team which is developing the UK's Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation, which is due to come into effect in April 2008.

He joined the UK Civil Service in September 1992, since when he has worked in a number of Government Departments including the Cabinet Office, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Department for Transport.

Previously Commercial Director of Dalgety Agriculture with responsibility for Crop Marketing and Raw material procurement for compound feed mills.

Career Involvement in international grain trade, animal feed manufacture, shipping and risk management.

President of COCERAL 2004-2007, the EU Grain and Feed association. Current Board member. Coceral is the main body for consultation with the EU Commission on EU matters affecting agribusiness and agricultural markets.

President of UKASTA (UK Agricultural Supply Industry Association) 2000

Member of the Baltic Exchange

Sarah presents BBC Radio 4’s flagship TodayProgramme. She is also an occasional presenter on BBC World’s Hardtalk.

The Today Programme has been nominated for the Sony Breakfast Show Awards and a News & Current Affairs Award at the 2006 Sony Radio Academy Awards

Douglas Ward, CBE
Managing Director, Argent Energy (UK) Ltd

Doug first worked in the poultry industry in the 1970s, originally on the edible side and has now been involved in the animal by-products industry for many years. He was MD of By-Products for the former Hillsdown Holdings plc and was involved in the MBO of the former Hillsdown companies that formed the base of Argent Energy.

Malcolm Shepherd

Malcolm Shepherd is a Business Consultant for Biofuel Matters Ltd, a company that provides specialist consultancy services for commercial companies, government agencies, trade associations and NGOs on biofuel issues - with particular emphasis on commodity risk management, feedstock selection, co-product utilisation, supply networks and competition for crops.
Current projects for biodiesel and bioethanol clients include feedstock procurement & risk management strategies, evaluating alternative markets for biofuel co-products and investigating the issues & facts surrounding the “food versus fuel” debate.

Before establishing Biofuel Matters, Malcolm was Managing Director of Green Spirit Fuels, Director of eBIO (European Bioethanol Producers Association) and Managing Director of Wessex Grain Ltd. His working experience involves commodity trading, animal feed & feed ingredient processing and management of a large bioethanol project that included the investigation of feed markets for fermentation residues.

Graham Prince, Communications Director, D1 Oils plc

Graham has over 20 years experience of working in corporate and financial public relations. Graham joined D1 from Carbon International, a specialist environmental public relations agency in 2005. Graham was formerly a Director of Gavin Anderson & Company, a leading international communications agency, and worked for the company in both London and Tokyo, Japan.

Prior to joining Gavin Anderson, he spent two years as International Communications Manager of Mitsubishi Corporation, Japan’s largest general trading company. Before beginning his communications career, Graham was First Secretary Economic Affairs at the British Embassy in Tokyo.

Dr Jeremy Woods

Dr Jeremy Woods is a lecturer in bioenergy at Imperial College London where he leads the sustainability assessment component of the Porter Institute and is a member of the Centre for Energy Policy and Technology. He has developed research interests into the interplay between development, land-use and the sustainable exploitation of renewable and non-renewable resources, in particular biomass energy. He is a member of the Royal Society’s Working Group on Biofuels and co-coordinates the EU funded 'Competence Platform for Energy Crops - Africa (COMPETE)' Network. Recent work has included collaborating on assessments of the Sustainability of Co-firing and of renewable transport fuels for UK-DTI and of the potential for sugarcane based energy in southern Africa.

He is a consultant to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and helped to produce a framework 'International Bioenergy Platform.' He recently became chairman of the UK-Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment, which is a national member of the ICSU- hosted global SCOPE network on science and the environment. For the last 11 years, he has also been working on the use of sweet sorghum for bioenergy production in the EU, Africa (Zambia and Zimbabwe) and Asia. He lectures on the Environmental Technology and Policy MSc at Imperial College London. He is also a director of Themba Technology Ltd (www.thembatech.com), a UK-based company which aims to promote the use of renewable energy both locally and internationally.

Dr Douglas Parr is the Chief Scientist and Director of Policy at Greenpeace UK, looking after the science and political lobbying functions. His current focus is on tackling climate change in the power, heat and transport sectors, including biofuels.

He joined Greenpeace 14 years ago, and has worked on a number of technical and policy issues including GM crops and agriculture, chemicals legislation and nuclear power. He obtained a D.Phil in Atmospheric Chemistry in 1991.

Dr Andrew Boswell studied chemistry and protein structure, and then worked with IT in industry and academia for quarter of a century. With a long term interest in environmental issues, he became the first Green Party councillor to be elected to Norfolk County Council in 2005. Last year he chaired a working group on Climatic Impacts of Norfolk council’s activities that recommended a wide-ranging package of energy reduction measures to reduce Council emissions.

He is a core member of the NGO biofuelwatch and supports the many recent calls for moratoriums on agrofuels. His central thesis is that the catastropic climate change must be tackled on the basis of sound science and that humanity cannot afford false solutions. The emerging evidence of social and environmental problems with agrofuels require full scientific scrutiny and policy debate before further implementation and before existing negative impacts become unmanageable.

Alastair Dickie, has spent the last 30 years as a trader and analyst in the world’s commodity markets. His experience includes trading in grains, soyabeans & meals, all vegetable oils (including managing softseed crushing plants, animal feed mills and poultry units), sugar, metals (ferrous & non-ferrous). He is also experienced in international foreign exchange and interest rate futures.

His experience in different commodity markets covered all aspects of the risks associated with the trading business and he specialised in Market Risk Assessment and the use of Futures and Options, lecturing to commercial audiences in Europe and the Far East.

He has been, since 1999, the Director of the Crop Marketing department of the HGCA, the statutory body responsible for the cereal and oilseed industries in the UK. His department is responsible for the provision of market information and training, market development of cereals and oilseeds at home and the promotion of exports. British Cereal Exports (BCE) is part of his Department.