Ex-MP joins race to be police commissioner

Ian Cawsey, who was MP for Brigg and Goole for 13 years until his defeat in the 2010 elections, said he was standing for the £75,000-a-year role “because so many people said I should”.

The 51-year-old political director for the World Society for the Protection of Animals, which campaigns against the cruel treatment of animals, will compete for the Labour nomination against former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Prescott, Hull’s Lord Mayor Colin Inglis and former Humberside Police chief superintendent Keith Hunter.

Mr Cawsey said: “I think I am offering something completely different to the other candidates. I have a lot of experience in policing, law and order, I serve now on the local town council, I led a unitary authority, I was on the old Humberside County Council, been an MP, chaired the police authority, served on the Home Affairs Select Committee.

“I think that’s a lot of experience – if you look at others, most have some of that but none have all of that.”

He said he’d been encouraged to stand by people, including serving and retired police officers, and warned a “bull in a china shop” approach to the job wouldn’t work: “There is a nervousness in some people that a commissioner can be a great power for good but it can also be someone who makes things much more difficult for the police in the area.

“I think what is important is a commissioner should not be someone who is a frustrated police person who wants to run a police force. It should be somebody who wants to work with the local authorities and local communities and say this is what we require.”

The new commissioners will have the power to hire and fire chief constables and set the police force’s budget and “strategic direction”.