1. Ian Cameron Swales was born on 5 April 1953 and is a British Liberal Democrat politician.
23 Facts About Ian Swales
1. 2.
Ian Swales was the Member of Parliament for the constituency of Redcar in England.
3.
Ian Swales is the only person ever to gain a North East Region Commons seat for the Liberal Democrats.
4.
Ian Swales is the son of Harry Swales and Elizabeth Adamson Doig.
5.
Ian Swales's Scottish mother was a first cousin of Peter Doig, Labour MP for Dundee West from 1963 to 1979.
6.
Ian Swales was born in Leeds and grew up in Harrogate; his mother died when he was eight years old.
7.
Ian Swales moved to Teesside in 1978 to join large chemical company ICI and settled in Redcar.
8.
Ian Swales joined the SDP when it was founded in 1981, and was a member of the first SDP Cleveland County Committee.
9.
Ian Swales contested the 2005 general election in the Redcar Constituency and moved the Liberal Democrats from third to second place with a positive swing against both the Labour and Conservative parties.
10.
Ian Swales made his maiden speech in Parliament on 7 June 2010.
11.
In May 2014, Ian Swales was appointed to the taskforce group for electrification of rail in the north by the Secretary of State for Transport, Patrick McLoughlin, MP.
12.
Shortly after the 2010 election, Ian Swales became an active member of the Public Accounts Committee, which sits twice a week and scrutinises all public expenditure.
13.
In June 2014, Ian Swales resigned from the Committee, citing frontbench commitments.
14.
Ian Swales sat on the Welfare Reform and Finance Bill Committees, and campaigned against tax avoidance.
15.
In July 2014, Ian Swales announced that he was standing down as an MP at the 2015 general election, for "personal reasons".
16.
In October 2021, after the murder of David Amess, Ian Swales revealed that he stood down because of a 2014 incident in which two men entered his constituency office claiming to know where he lived and threatening to kill him.
17.
Ian Swales advised the management of Redcar steel works and in August 2015 joined the Board, becoming Chair, of the Northeast of England Process Industry Cluster, the body that represents companies in the chemical, pharmaceutical, polymer, renewable energy and materials, steel and biotechnology process industries in North-East England.
18.
Ian Swales was the founding Chair of mental health charity The Link Tees Valley Ltd.
19.
Ian Swales is Chair of the grant giving charity the Woodsmith Foundation and a Director of Redcar Racecourse Limited.
20.
Ian Swales was active in Redcar Swimming Club and after the closure of the old pool campaigned for a new one.
21.
Ian Swales was on the Committee of Coatham Memorial Hall for many years.
22.
Ian Swales is a humanist, and in 2015 was made an honorary life member of Humanists UK for his work in Parliament.
23.
Ian Swales's interests include travel, cooking, playing bridge, walking and genealogy.