NORTH Swindon MP Michael Wills has resigned as a junior Home Office minister amid growing frustration that he has not been able to fulfil the ambitions he entered politics to achieve.

He now wants to spearhead a campaign to scrap the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and champion the cause of trade injustice from the backbenches two areas he feels he has been unable to pursue while Parliamentary Under Secretary for the Criminal Justice System.

Mr Wills, 51, first told the Prime Minister in April that he intended to go, but Mr Blair and chancellor Gordon Brown Mr Wills' closest political friend persuaded him to stay on for a few more months.

He said: "I knew I wanted to go in April. Being a minister is important, but there are other things I can do things I care passionately about. The first thing I want to focus on is trade justice.

"Having served on specific tasks in individual departments of government for more than four years, my decision now allows me the opportunity to speak in the House of Commons and elsewhere on the range of issue that brought me into public service.

"Among other things I intend to pursue is the cause of trade justice including reform of the CAP, which is a grotesque protection racket. For example, even though sugar costs twice as much to produce in Europe than it does in places like South Africa or Mozambique, the world's poorest countries are being deprived of the chance to sell competitively in our market."

He claims the average UK family is paying an extra £8 a on its weekly food bill to support it, lining the pockets of already rich European farmers every time they prepare a bowl of cereal, pour milk and sprinkle sugar on it.

He wants to campaign to end the CAP by working with charities and animal welfare groups. He also plans a mass e-mail petition to gather support.

"I didn't enter politics to become a minister I was elected so I could make a difference.

"At all times my political priority has been to serve my constituents in North Swindon and it will remain so. I have offered myself for reselection as the Labour candidate for North Swindon at the next General Election."

Mr Wills, who is married and lives in Castle Eaton, near Cricklade, with his five children, was one of the founders of New Labour but has admitted to becoming increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of change in politics.

He says he feels he can now achieve much more from the backbenches than he ever could as a junior minister.

Politics, he says, has always got to be about passion and the causes MPs fight are more important than the offices they hold. He handed a letter of resignation to the Prime Minister on Friday.

Educated at Haberdasher's Askes in Elstree and Clare College, Cambridge, where he received a double first in history, Mr Wills spent four years working for the Foreign Office in India before he became a television producer. He was elected as MP for North Swindon in 1997 and became a minister two years later.

He famously wrote Gordon Brown's speech in which the chancellor promised there would be no rise in income tax and was made a special patriotism envoy in a bid to define Britishness by Tony Blair.

We made a decision to raise National Insurance to pay for improvements in the health service and that was the right decision, but now we've got to show we can deliver