This is a primarily rural seat in the south-west of County Durham. Outside the town of Bishop Auckland, the seat’s two chief industries remain farming and tourism. In the town, heavy industry is dominant but declining.
The Conservative Party has traditionally found a measure of support in the beautiful countryside surrounding Barnard Castle, Teesdale, Startforth and the Wear Valley. Its candidates have traditionally polled around 18,000 votes in elections prior to 1997, comfortably higher than almost every other Durham constituency.
However, these efforts have not yet been enough to prise out Labour who have held the seat since 1935 and the days of local MP Hugh Dalton, chancellor of the exchequer in the Atlee government after the war.
This diverse, wedge-shaped seat, which is home to the Bishop of Durham, a Glaxo-Wellcome factory and the reservoirs of Northumbrian Water, has returned its MP Derek Foster in each of the past four elections.
Mr Foster proved to be one of Tony Blair’s shortest-lived ministerial appointments, quitting after just three days in May 1997. He said the prime minister had failed to honour a promise to give him a cabinet post after he vacated the chief whips job two years previously.
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