Julie Kirkbride, married to former shadow Northern Ireland secretary Andrew Mackay, has a son and is a former journalist.

The best way we can tackle crime is by restoring the 20 police officers lost to the Bromsgrove force since 1997.

More police on the beat will deter criminals and reassure the public.

We will also restore honesty in sentencing so that criminals actually serve the jail sentence they were set at their trial, rather than under Labour where many dangerous criminals have been let out under their new early release scheme.

Labour has completely let us down on school funding, with the gap between the funding of pupils in Bromsgrove schools growing from eight per cent less than the national average in 1997 to more than 10 per cent today.

This means a child in Bromsgrove has around £500 per year less to spend on their education than a child in Birmingham - a difference which makes £100,000 worth of difference to some school budgets.

The Conservative Party will introduce a national funding formula so that each child is treated equally according to his or her needs, rather than by the accident of the local authority in which their parents happen to live.

The Labour Government has grossly mishandled the foot-and-mouth crises as I know from the very many desperate farmers who have contacted me.

We will do more to help them by ensuring that food imported into the country meets the same animal welfare standards as we expect from our own farmers and we will introduce honesty in food labelling so that the public can buy British and support our farmers.

On the industrial front we will reduce Labour's burden of red tape and bureaucracy so that businesses are free to get on with chasing contracts rather than working for the Government.