FORMER Tory MP Ian Bruce will fight to regain the South Dorset seat if he is reselected as the Conservative Party parliamentary candidate.

Mr Bruce was defeated by just 153 votes in last year's general election and conceded the constituency he had held for 14 years to Labour MP Jim Knight.

But now he is vying to win back the knife-edged seat in standing as a prospective parliamentary candidate for his party, with a decision likely to be made later in the year following a series of interviews and a secret ballot of around 1,000 Conservative Party Association members.

He said: "I am standing because I believe I have a good chance of regaining the seat at the next election and I want to make sure that the South Dorset area is doing well because it is in my blood.

"After the defeat last time the whole process starts again and I have to convince people that I am the right person for the job and get 100 per cent support from the members."

Immediately after that narrow defeat, which saw Labour take over the South Dorset seat for the first time in 40 years, Mr Bruce was undecided as to whether he would stand again and took time to consider his options.

He said: "It would have been completely wrong to instantly assume I could win the seat back so I needed to take soundings as to whether people would accept me as a candidate.

"But I'm not only confident of the support, I am also confident that we can win the seat back which is the most important thing." Mr Bruce said that the Tory campaign will focus on how to make better use of funding locally in areas such as public services, employment, health and housing.

He added: "The Labour government comes out with wonderful statements about what they are going to achieve but the fact they have failed to deliver will play strongly in the next election.

"Locally, they promised immediately before the election that we would have our Brown Route but it now looks like it will be another few years before it is built.

"We were also told that a new regiment would be moved into Bovington which is not going to happen and then there is the whole campaign about the helicopter which the Government are trying to take away from Portland, yet they go on pretending that they have no such intentions.

"So they've made promises on all sorts of things but all we have is higher taxes."

But the Conservative campaign will not just concentrate on what they think Labour have failed to do, but highlight their own plans for improvements in South Dorset.

Mr Bruce said: "We will be talking about specific policies and how we could spend the money better taken from overseas examples and borrowing ideas from the best in the world. We have to utilise the money that is there and show clear leadership."

During his time away from politics, Mr Bruce has kept himself busy in a variety of projects. The selection process is likely to continue until the end of September when a decision will be announced on who will be the candidate.

Coun Mike Goodman, South Dorset Conservative Party Association Chairman said: "This is exciting time for us. The whole qualifying membership will be invited to listen to the short list of candidates and ask questions before the vote. The winner will be announced ahead of the party conference in October."