Also announcing his candidature yesterday was retired lawyer Christopher Foren, who recently prosecuted killer nurse Colin Norris and the mother of abused four-year-old Leticia Wright.

David Icke, the former footballer and TV presenter, has also said he will contest the election, caused by the resignation of Shadow Home Secretary David Davis last week.

Mr Davis is attempting to win back his constituency campaigning against the Government's supposed erosion of civil liberties, and yesterday announced he had secured £40,000 in small donations from supporters since making his controversial move.

Neither Labour nor the Liberal Democrats will contest the seat, but yesterday the Green Party announced it will stand a candidate – Beverley-based education consultant Shan Oakes.

She said: "I'm looking forward to highlighting the Tories' hypocrisy on civil liberties."

Mrs Saward, who has become a rape law campaigner following her 1986 attack, said she was considering whether to stand in the by-election.

She said: "I want men and women – including children – to be at liberty to walk the streets of our towns and cities without fear of violence in general – and sexual violence in particular; and to feel safe in their own homes and workplaces.

"And part of that 'British liberty' is to expect the law enforcement agencies to use every tool at their disposal to catch the people responsible for the attack - and to never give up.

"Mr Davis thinks that by forcing a by-election he is standing up for British justice. In reality he is attempting to strike a hammer blow through the very tools the police need to keep us safe.

"We need somebody to stand in this by election who will say the national DNA database and CCTV are good things – just ask those victims who have seen their attacker jailed for proof."

Mr Foren, 52, said he was using the by-election to launch a new political party called Work for Progress. It will be positioned to the left of New Labour and will call for greater economic equality, a greener Britain, constitutional reform and an end to net immigration.

"I want my party to represent some of the lower-paid people that have been abandoned by Labour," he said. "I also want to campaign to stop the runaway population growth that will see 70 million people here in the UK by 2031.

"We'll have to build God-knows how many more houses and destroy far more green land. I want a policy that limits the number of people coming in to the number of people leaving the country. We've survived without so much immigration before and we can do so again."

David Icke said he will highlight the "depth, scale and connections of the rapidly emerging – and global – Big Brother State".