Robert Goodwill
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Robert Goodwill (born December 31, 1956) British politician and farmer He is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Scarborough and Whitby.
Robert Goodwill was born in North Yorkshire and was educated at the Quaker Bootham School in York, and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture in 1979. He is a farmer of 250 acres of mainly arable land near Malton which has been in his family since 1850. He has been the managing director of Mowthorpe (UK) Ltd since 1995 which offers environmentally friendly burials in the North Yorkshire countryside.
He unsuccessfully contested Redcar at the 1992 General Election where he finished second, some 11,577 votes behind the sitting Labour MP Mo Mowlam. In 1994 he unsuccessfully contested Cleveland and Richmond constituency at the European Parliamentary elections. He again attempted to enter the British parliament at the 1997 General Election when he was selected for the marginally held Conservative seat of Leicestershire North West following the retirement of the sitting MP David Ashby. Goodwill was defeated by Labour's David Taylor by 13,219 votes. In 1998 he contested the South Yorkshire by-election for the European Parliament, but was again defeated. He was elected as a Member of the European Parliament at the 1999 European Parliament Election for the Yorkshire and the Humber seat, he served in Brussels and Strasbourg until 2004. He was elected to the House of Commons at the 2005 General Election for Scarborough and Whitby, gaining the seat from Labour's Lawrie Quinn by just 1,245 votes. He made his maiden speech on June 6, 2005, [link] in which he boasted that his constituency is the setting for both the Yorkshire Television series Heartbeat at Goathland; and that the North Yorkshire Moors Railway has been used for the Hogsmeade Express in the Harry Potter films. He has been a member of the transport select committee since 2005.
He is married to Maureen and they have two sons and a daughter. He was once the chairman of the cereals and livestock committee of the North Yorkshire National Farmers Union 1986-8. He takes a keen interest in steam engine and owns several, he once brought an engine back from the former Czechoslovakia to restore it. He also speaks French, German and some Russian.
External links
- [Robert Goodwill MP] official site
- [Robert Goodwill MP] biography at the site of the Conservative Party
- [Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Robert Goodwill MP]
- [TheyWorkForYou.com - Robert Goodwill MP]
- [The Public Whip - Robert Goodwill MP] voting record
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