Barnet councillor Vanessa Gearson has been selected as the Tories' prospective parliamentary candidate for Cheltenham in the party's first ever all-female shortlist.

Ms Gearson, who is Barnet Tories' cabinet member for education and councillor for Hampstead Garden Suburb, was selected ahead of Worcestershire councillor Elizabeth Eyre and Gloucestershire County councillor Julie Girling by an overwhelming majority last Thursday.

"I am completely shell-shocked and have not come to terms with the magnitude of it yet," she said.

"I have no intention of stepping down from the council at the moment.

"They know I work in London and I will be based here Monday to Friday. They will have to take into account those restrictions.

"I cannot say what level of time commitment it will require of me.

"I will be discussing the matter with the leader of the council Victor Lyon I would never jeopardise the work we are doing in Barnet."

Matthew Harris, chairman of Barnet Liberal Democrats, said Ms Gearson needed to be clear about her responsibilities within Barnet Council.

He said: "She must make her intentions clear.

"If she is going to resign at any point in the next few months, she cannot take any long-term decisions here.

"It is not necessarily that we think she should resign, but how can she be cabinet member with strategic control for education if she is going to resign in the future?"

The news comes just two weeks after Ms Gearson also secured a new job as head of Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith's office.

She will be fighting the seat which the Tories famously lost to the Liberal Democrats in the 1992 elections after an allegedly racist vote against their black candidate John Taylor.

October 2, 2002 16:30