11:16am Thursday 23rd November 2006
By David Jeffels
JOHN Greenway, Ryedale's MP for the past 20 years, is to stand down at the next General Election.
The news, announced last night from his Westminster office, follows his failure to win the Conservative Party nomination for the new Thirsk and Malton constituency.
He lost to the sitting MP for the Vale of York division, Anne McIntosh, the newly-appointed Shadow Minister for Education, in a vote taken at a private meeting of some 300 party members at Ampleforth College on Saturday.
Mr Greenway said in a statement: "I believe that the experience and contacts I have gained through almost 20 years at Westminster, and with three more years or so still to come, will stand me and the many organisations with whom I am involved, in good stead.
"I have received many positive messages about what has happened from friends everywhere for which I am deeply grateful."
After the meeting of the shadow Thirsk and Malton constituency party meeting at the weekend, Mr Greenway said he was "bitterly disappointed" by the decision but felt he had not been supported by members of the party in his own constituency.
Less than a third of the potential membership able to attend the meeting had been present, he added.
"However, I do wish Anne every success.
I am sure the new seat will be a Conservative stronghold after the next election."
Mr Greenway, a former Shadow Sports Minister, who won five General Elections in Ryedale, won the traditionally Tory seat back from Ryedale councillor Elizabeth Shields after she clinched a major by-election success for the Liberals nearly 25 years ago.
He believed the fact that Ms McIntosh is younger than him - she is 52 - and a woman had probably been responsible for swinging the vote in her favour. He added that he would be 63 by the next election.
A move to open up the selection to a wider field was heavily defeated, said Mr Greenway, leaving himself and Ms McIntosh in a head-to-head battle.
"I have had a fantastic career representing Ryedale and I believe I have been able to help many people with their own individual problems, and to campaign at Government and Parliamentary level on key issues affecting the district, such as flood defences, giving help to victims of flooding, farming, pressing for improvements to the A64 and helping to retain hospital services at Malton to name but a few."
Both Ryedale and Vale of York constituencies disappear at the next General Election as part of a shake up of Parliamentary boundaries. Ryedale forms some two-thirds of the new division with the remainder coming from parts of the Vale of York, Richmondshire, Selby and Craven divisions.
Murray Naylor, chairman of the shadow Thirsk and Malton Conservative Association, said in a statement: "I am sure everyone will rally round to make the new seat a safe one for the party."
The new division will have some 70,000 electorate stretching from Filey on the coast across to Topcliffe and Tollerton and going within seven miles of Northallerton.
Ms McIntosh said: "Obviously it was a very difficult situation for both John and myself because we both had a partial claim to the new seat."
However, she added: "I am absolutely delighted to have been selected as the new Conservative prospective candidate and I do thank John for being so gracious after the decision had been made known."
Both will continue in their roles as MPs for the respective constituencies until the next election. Ms McIntosh said she intends to learn more about the new constituency, which was not in her current division.
"It is a very great honour to have been selected and I shall work flat out for the interests of the new Thirsk and Malton constituency. I want to be the voice to champion the countryside."
Ms McIntosh, who lives in Thirsk with her husband John Harvey, a business executive, was educated at Harrogate Ladies College and studied at the universities of Edinburgh, her home city, and Aarhus in Denmark.
After qualifying as a Scottish advocate she practised law in Edinburgh and Brussels and then worked for the Conservatives in the European Parliament.
She fought Workington at the 1986 election and later served as MEP for North East Essex and South Suffolk, acting as assistant whip and Conservative transport spokesman.
She was elected MP for the Vale of York in 1997 and in November 2003 became Shadow Minister for the Environment and Transport, later being Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Works and Pensions before moving to her new post in education just two weeks ago.
© Copyright 2001-2012 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.gazetteherald.co.uk/trade_directory/