Robert Goodwill, MP for Whitby and Scarborough, has replaced Stephen Hammond as roads minister, according to a report in Motor Transport.
Motor Transport describes this as "part of a series of changes that appear to increase ministers’ focus on rail services".
Stephen Hammond was appointed parliamentary under secretary of state for transport in September 2012, and since then has held responsibility for roads and road safety.
Robert Goodwill was born in North Yorkshire and has a 250 acre farm at Terrington near Malton, where the family have farmed since 1850.
Between 1999 and 2004 he was a Conservative MEP and in May 2005 was elected MP for Scarborough and Whitby. In 2006, he was promoted to the front bench, serving in the Opposition Whips’ office having departmental responsibilities for DEFRA business. In July 2007 he was promoted again to the post of shadow roads minister.
Mr Goodwill was re-elected in 2010 and was immediately appointed an assistant government whip; shortly after this, he was promoted to pairing whip in the Government Whips’ Office.
One of the worst problems of government in this and probably many other countries is that the notional heads of department are rarely in place long enough to get to grips with their briefs before being shunted elsewhere – as Robin Day famously said, “here today, gone tomorrow”, to Sir John Nott in the early 1980s. Any normal commercial company that changed its COE this often would go bust in short order. That said, I welcome this appointment because of Mr. Goodwill’s previous involvement in transport.
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