Prime Minister Tony Blair has ordered an investigation into the running of the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

The review, into the department created to replace Maff (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food), is to be carried out by one of Mr Blair's senior advisors - Lord Haskins.

MPs say Defra has a huge raft of overlapping agencies which waste money and fail to deliver.

BBC news correspondent Miriam O'Reilly said the investigation would particularly focus on the work of the Countryside Agency.

Haskins will report back to Tony Blair

She said: "Lord Haskins will not only look at how Defra spends its budget of nearly �300 million, but whether it is in control of its nearly 300 quangos and agencies."

A Defra spokesman told BBC News Online: "Defra is proposing to carry out a review of the way we deliver rural policy to make sure we are as effective as possible in delivering a secure and prosperous future for the countryside.

"This is important because the government has set a new rural target to improve economic productivity and services in rural areas.

"Defra has been talking to Lord Haskins about the review and an announcement will be made in due course."

The review has come after pressure from David Curry, chairman of the all-party parliamentary committee, which monitors Defra's work.

He believes the department has too large a brief, is not succeeding and has to be reformed.

Previously Lord Haskins, a Labour peer, headed up the government's Rural Task Force, which was set up following the foot-and-mouth crisis.

Defra was set up last year to replace most of the functions of Maff and some of the responsibilities of the former Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) were split.

Maff was blamed for failing to act decisively against the horror of BSE and the foot-and-mouth crisis.