Shropshire Star

Shropshire MEP feels like 'new girl at school' on taking her EU seat

Newly-elected Shropshire Euro MP Jill Seymour has taken her seat in Strasbourg for the first time with a simple mission – to make herself redundant.

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Mrs Seymour is now Ukip's lead MEP for the West Midlands after the Euro elections in May, where Ukip won three out of the seven seats in the region.

It is quite a jump from sitting on Kynnersley Parish Council, near Telford, where she has served since 2007. But it is a challenge Mrs Seymour is looking forward to tackling head on after arriving in Strasbourg yesterday.

She said she would be looking after Shropshire and Staffordshire, with fellow winners Bill Etheridge and Jim Carver responsible for the Black Country and Hereford & Worcester respectively. "It's quite daunting and nerve-wracking," she said. "It is a very large complex and there is a lot to take in. You do feel a bit like the new girl at school – it's a bit like being at primary school for a week and then being thrown into secondary modern.

"While I am here I hope to tackle some of the key issues for people in Shropshire and Staffordshire. HS2 is a big issue. I am very concerned about the NHS, and equally worried about over-development of housing on greenfield sites and how it affects us. We need to find out what role the EU is playing in all this."

Mrs Seymour said she had a two-fold goal she wanted to achieve by the end of her five-year term in office.

"People often ask me what is the EU," she said. "They say they don't know what their MEP is over there for. At the end of my term I want my constituents to be able to say 'I do know what my MEP is over there for, they are there to help me'. I also want to hopefully make myself redundant by the EU collapsing on itself or, at the very least, Britain getting out of it."

Ukip came top in both Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin according to the breakdown of results from the elections.

Mrs Seymour said: "Quite simply the British public is fed up of the same old rhetoric and spin from the Lib Lab Con."

  • See also: Changing of Brussels guard after elections

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