LEADING Ryedale politician Robert Goodwill has taken on a new role.

An MEP who is one of North Yorkshire's representatives at Brussels, Mr Goodwill has now been adopted as the prospective parliamentary candidate for the Conservatives in the marginal Scarborough and Whitby constituency.

The seat has been held since 1997 by Labour's Lawrie Quinn who at the last general election had a majority of just over 3,500.

Mr Goodwill, a 46-year-old farmer of Southwood Farm, Terrington, previously fought two parliamentary elections for a seat at Westminster, against the former Northern Ireland secretary of state Mo Mowlam, at Redcar, and at North West Leicestershire.

After five years in the European Parliament, he is leaving Brussels at the EU elections next June and will be concentrating on the Scarborough and Whitby seat, which stretches from Staithes in the north to just south of Scarborough, and takes in a large part of the North York Moors National Park. He was selected from a list of 66 applicants to be the candidate.

He was recently elected vice-chairman of the Tory group of MEPs and is now the party's front bench spokesman on environmental policies.

A self-confessed Euro sceptic, he says he has campaigned against the euro and the proposed new European constitution.Regarding the British government, he says the future of the farming and fishing industries will be two of his principal concerns in the lead up to the next general election. "They are both in crisis," he says.

Mr Goodwill's family has farmed at Terrington since 1850 and he runs a 250-acre arable farm.

He is married to Maureen, a school classroom assistant, and the couple have three children. Despite his hectic political life, he still finds time to pursue his long-standing hobby of restoring steam traction engines and a steam lorry.

Updated: 12:42 Monday, December 29, 2003