Frank Field (British politician)

The Right Honourable
Frank Field
DL MP

Field speaking in 2012
Chairman of the Work and Pensions
Select Committee
Assumed office
18 June 2015
Preceded by Dame Anne Begg
Minister for Welfare Reform
In office
2 May 1997 – 28 July 1998
Prime Minister Tony Blair
Preceded by Peter Lilley
Succeeded by John Denham
Member of Parliament
for Birkenhead
Assumed office
3 May 1979
Preceded by Edmund Dell
Majority 20,652 (52.8%)
Personal details
Born (1942-07-16) 16 July 1942
Edmonton, Middlesex, England
Nationality English
Political party Labour
Alma mater University of Hull
Occupation Politician
Religion Anglican
Website www.frankfield.co.uk

Frank Ernest Field DL MP (born 16 July 1942) is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Birkenhead since 1979. From 1997 to 1998, he served as the Minister of Welfare Reform, before leaving the Government, following differences with Prime Minister Tony Blair. He went on to become one of the Labour government's most vocal critics from within the party on the backbenches. Field has campaigned against poverty and low pay throughout his career, proposing various welfare reforms over the years.[1] In June 2015 Field was elected Chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee.

Early life

Field was born in London, the second of three sons. His father was a labourer in Morgan Crucible's factory in Battersea and his mother was a teaching assistant. His parents were Tories "who believed in character and pulling oneself up by one's own bootstraps".[2] Field was educated at St Clement Danes School which was then located in Hammersmith, London, before studying economics at the University of Hull. In his youth, he was a member of the Conservative Party, but left because of his opposition to South Africa's apartheid system.[3]

In 1964, he became a further education teacher in Southwark and Hammersmith. Field served as a councillor in the London Borough of Hounslow from 1964 to 1968. He was a Director of the Child Poverty Action Group 1969–79, and of the Low Pay Unit (a body that campaigned to ensure wages councils protected the rights of workers in certain industries) during 1974–80.[1]

Political career

Field unsuccessfully contested the constituency of South Buckinghamshire at the 1966 General Election, where he was defeated by the sitting Conservative MP Ronald Bell. He was selected to contest the safe Labour seat of Birkenhead at the 1979 General Election on the retirement of the sitting MP Edmund Dell. Field held the seat with a majority of 5,909 and has remained the constituency's MP since then.

In Parliament, Field was made a member of the Opposition frontbench by the then Labour leader Michael Foot as a spokesman on education in 1980, but was dropped a year later. Following the appointment of Neil Kinnock as the Labour leader in 1983, Field was appointed as a spokesman on health and social security for a year. He was appointed the chairman of the social services select committee in 1987, becoming the chairman of the new social security select committee in 1990, a position he held until the 1997 election.

Two nights before the Conservative Party leadership election in November 1990, he visited then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at 10 Downing Street. He advised her that her time as Prime Minister was drawing to a close and that she should back John Major to take over the role. His reason for doing so was that he felt that her Conservative colleagues would not tell her straight that she could not win a leadership contest. Following this meeting, he was smuggled out of Downing Street's back door. Two days later Margaret Thatcher supported John Major for the post, and Major went on to be Prime Minister.[4]

Nigel Dodds, Nelson McCausland and Frank Field

Following the 1997 election, with Labour in power, Field joined the government of Tony Blair as the Minister of Welfare Reform at the Department of Social Security with the rank of Minister of State. He was also made a member of the Privy Council. Field viewed his task as "thinking the unthinkable" in terms of social security reform, but others report that Prime Minister Blair wanted some simpler vote-winning policy ideas.[3] Blair writes that: "the problem was not so much that his thoughts were unthinkable as unfathomable".[5]

There were clashes with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, and the Secretary of State for Social Security, Harriet Harman. Field resigned his ministerial position in 1998 rather than accept a move away from the Department of Social Security offered by Blair in a reshuffle. It was reported that Field had argued for Blair to promote him to Secretary of State for Social Security.[6]

After holding office, he was a member of the ecclesiastical and public accounts committees. From the backbenches, he was a vocal critic of the government, voting against Foundation Hospitals in November 2003. In May 2008, he was a significant critic of the abolition of the 10p tax rate[7] and this led to Field describing Gordon Brown as "unhappy inside his own body".[8] He later apologised in parliament for the personal attack.[9] In June 2008, Field joined calls for the establishment of a devolved parliament for England.[10]

On 8 June 2009, Field wrote on his internet blog that he believed that the Labour Party would not win the next election with Gordon Brown as leader. On 6 January 2010, Field was one of the few Labour leaders to back Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt's calls for a secret ballot of the Parliamentary Labour Party in regards to the leadership of Gordon Brown. The ballot could have led to a leadership contest.[11]

In May 2009 Field announced his candidacy for the Speaker of the House of Commons but later withdrew his candidacy citing lack of support from within his own party.[12] John Bercow was eventually elected as the new speaker.

In the 2010 general election Field retained his Birkenhead seat with an increased majority. In June 2010 he was appointed by David Cameron's coalition government to head an independent review into poverty,[13] which proposed adopting a new measure centred around life-chance indicators and increasing funding for early years education.[14][15][16] In an interview in September 2012, Field considered the government to have ignored his report, saying "nothing had been done about it" and that it was "very disappointing".[17]

In October 2013, along with Laura Sandys, Field established the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Hunger and Food Poverty, which he went on to chair. He also chaired a parliamentary inquiry into hunger commissioned by the APPG which reported in December 2014.[18][19] Field became the chair of trustees of Feeding Britain, a charitable organisation set up in October 2015 to implement the recommendations made by the APPG.[20]

Following the 2015 general election, it was announced in June 2015 that he had been elected to the chairmanship of the Work and Pensions Select Committee.[21]

Field nominated Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015,[22] stating that while he did not think Corbyn could win a general election, he hoped his candidacy would force the party to confront its 'deficit denial'.[23][24]

Awards and honours

In March 2015, Field was awarded the Grassroot Diplomat Initiative Honouree for the co-founding of environmental organisation Cool Earth, a charity that works alongside indigenous villages to halt rainforest destruction as a bottom-up solution to an aging problem.[25]

In October 2011 he was appointed as a Deputy Lieutenant for Merseyside.[26]

Personal beliefs

Field's political stance has been somewhat at odds with the rest of the Parliamentary Labour Party in recent years, and he has embraced more social conservative ideas. He is a member of the advisory board of the free-market think tank Reform, and of the generally conservative but also "broad church" magazine Standpoint. In May 2008, he said that Margaret Thatcher "is certainly a hero" and that "I still see Mrs T from time to time – I always call her 'Mrs T', when I talk to her."[7]

Although there have been attempts to get him to defect to the Conservatives, they have been without success.[27] In 2008, Frank Field was named as the 100th most-influential right-winger in the United Kingdom by the Daily Telegraph.[27] Field supports the return of national service to tackle growing unemployment and instil "a sense of order and patriotism" in Britain’s young men and women.[28] However, in May 2010, Field endorsed left-wing candidate and eventual winner Ed Miliband to become leader of the Labour Party to replace Gordon Brown.

Field believes strongly in fighting climate change.[29] He co-founded the charity Cool Earth with Johan Eliasch. Cool Earth protects endangered rainforest and works with the local communities to combat climate change.[30]

Field is a practising Anglican, a former chairman of the Churches Conservation Trust, and a member of the Church of England General Synod.[31] Field's political and religious views are most clearly expressed in his book Neighbours From Hell (see publications list). Here he calls for a modern replacement for evangelical Christianity. He believes that respect for people in authority is no longer ceded just because of a person's position. However he feels that celebrities, such as Princess Diana, do get respect inappropriately.

Field also believes that moral and civic duties should be enforced by legislation and sanctions. Citizen Contracts should be the basis for receiving all state benefits and failure to meet the Contract would lead to benefit sanctions applied only by the police. Private views thought to be damaging to public conduct, and expressed in public, would be monitored and suppressed.

Field believes in reducing the time-limit within which women can have an abortion,[32] and in stripping abortion providers such as Marie Stopes of their counselling role and handing it to organisations not linked to abortion clinics.[33][34] With the Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, he has been vocal in two defeated attempts to legislate for such a reform in Parliament.[35] He is a prominent Eurosceptic within the Labour Party and declared on 20 February 2016 that he would campaign to leave the EU.[36]

Publications

References

  1. 1 2 "About Frank Field MP". Retrieved 30 April 2016.
  2. ↑ Aida Edemariam (3 July 2010). "Frank Field: 'Labour has always been conservative' | Politics". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2010-08-25.
  3. 1 2 Jay Rayner (2 July 2006). "Frank Field: Still thinking the unthinkable". London: The Observer. Retrieved 30 July 2007.
  4. ↑ Ben Wright (10 September 2009). "Thatcher joins Field's 30th bash". BBC News Online. Retrieved 11 September 2009.
  5. ↑ Tony Blair: A Journey (2010), p. 217.
  6. ↑ Michael White "Blair balances the power", The Guardian, 28 July 1998
  7. 1 2 "Frank Field: Frank – but so sorry". London: The Independent. 18 May 2008. Retrieved 18 May 2008.
  8. ↑ "Frank Field on Brown's 'rage'". BBC News (BBC). 12 May 2008. Retrieved 6 June 2010.
  9. ↑ "Frank Field's apology to PM". BBC News (BBC). 13 May 2008. Retrieved 6 June 2010.
  10. ↑ Lorraine Davidson (3 June 2008). "Gordon Brown pressed on English parliament". Times Online (London: Times Newspapers Ltd). Retrieved 14 July 2008.
  11. ↑ "Where do Labour MPs stand on call for leadership ballot". BBC News. 6 January 2010. Retrieved 7 January 2010.
  12. ↑ Merrick, Bob (21 May 2009). "Wirral MP Frank Field keen to lead reform as new Speaker". Liverpool Echo. Retrieved 7 January 2010.
  13. ↑ Watt, Nicholas (4 June 2010). "Frank Field to lead independent review into poverty in Britain". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
  14. ↑ Wintour, Patrick (2 December 2010). "Frank Field's poverty report challenges 'welfare state sacred cows'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
  15. ↑ "Review on Poverty and Life Chances". Retrieved 30 April 2016.
  16. ↑ Field, Frank (2010). The Foundation Years: preventing poor children becoming poor adults (PDF). HM Government.
  17. ↑ Gentleman, Amelia (23 September 2012). "Poverty tsar Frank Field plans own pilot project after coalition 'ignores report'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
  18. ↑ Butler, Patrick (7 December 2014). "‘Confront simple fact hunger stalks Britain’ urges church-funded report". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 1 May 2016.
  19. ↑ "Feeding Britain: A strategy for zero hunger in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland" (PDF). 2014. Retrieved 1 May 2016.
  20. ↑ "About us - Feeding Britain". Feeding Britain. Retrieved 1 May 2016.
  21. ↑ "Winning candidates for select committee Chairs announced". UK Parliament. 18 June 2015. Retrieved 19 June 2015.
  22. ↑ http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/who-nominated-who-2015-labour-leadership-election
  23. ↑ Field, Frank (23 July 2015). "Jeremy Corbyn and the leadership contest". Retrieved 1 May 2016.
  24. ↑ Field, Frank (22 July 2015). "I nominated Corbyn but he can't win a General Election, writes Frank Field". The Daily Mirror. Retrieved 1 May 2016.
  25. ↑ "Grassroot Diplomat Who's Who". Grassroot Diplomat. 15 March 2015. Retrieved 27 April 2015.
  26. ↑ The London Gazette: no. 59945. p. 20160. 21 October 2011.
  27. 1 2 Dale, Iain; Brivati, Brian (26 September 2008). "Top 100 right wingers: 100-76". The Telegraph (London). Retrieved 31 August 2009.
  28. ↑ "'Cure yob culture and bring back National Service'". Metro. 9 November 2009.
  29. ↑ "How you can save the rainforest". Times Online (London). 8 October 2006. Retrieved 2 May 2010.
  30. ↑ Who we are Cool Earth
  31. ↑ "Why I am Still an Anglican", Continuum 2006, page 57
  32. ↑ "Abortion and the 'Right to Know' – or, why we should link to our sources". London: The Daily telegraph. 29 March 2011. Retrieved 30 January 2013.
  33. ↑ "Frank Field: Why I joined Nadine Dorries to reform abortion counselling laws". The Liverpool Echo. Retrieved 30 January 2013.
  34. ↑ Quinn, Ben; Curtis, Polly; Stratton, Allegra (2 September 2011). "Anti-abortion bid in disarray as critics rally". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 30 January 2013.
  35. ↑ "Nadine Dorries bill debated". BBC. 7 September 2011.
  36. ↑ "A vote to leave is the only way to achieve major EU reform".

External links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Edmund Dell		 Member of Parliament for Birkenhead
1979–present 		Incumbent
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