Heavyweights battle for Accounts

City of York MP Hugh Bayley and Grimsby's Austin Mitchell are both bidding to become chairman of Westminster's spending watchdog, the Public Accounts Committee.

With chairmen of House of Commons select committees being elected by MPs for the first time – rather than appointed by party whips – they need to get 15 nominations from colleagues to stand. If they get that far, they will be up against former Minister Margaret Hodge who has already got sufficient backing.

Mr Bayley, who served as a Junior Social Security Minister under Tony Blair, has been on the Labour backbenches for most of his career since first being elected in 1992.

Meanwhile Mr Mitchell, a former Calender news presenter, is an outspoken Labour MP who starred in the Channel 4 documentary Tower Block of Commons last year, in which he spent a week living on Hull's Orchard Park estate.

Yesterday he said the watchdog could be a "bit sharper" in its work and promised an "interrogatory approach", while his independent-minded approach will mean he is not simply a defender of Labour's record and decisions made by the previous government.

The Public Accounts Committee holds the Government to account over spending, and the job of chairman is reserved for a member of the opposition.

Gainsborough's Tory grandee Edward Leigh held the post before the election.

Meanwhile Beverley and Holderness MP Graham Stuart has already secured enough nominations to stand as chairman of the education select committee. He is backed by Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman, who held the post previously.

Mr Stuart, who was first elected in 2005, sat on the children, schools and families select committee in the last parliament and increased his majority from 2,580 to 12,987 at the general election.