‘Frank spent his life being a voice for the most vulnerable, people in the country’
TRIBUTES were paid to former MP and peer Frank Field yesterday – one of Britain’s most dedicated social champions – who has died aged 81.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer were among those to praise Lord Field, a key voice on welfare reform over his four decades in parliament.
For 39 years he served as the Labour MP for Birkenhead and was made a minister by Tony Blair before becoming a Brexit-supporting independent in 2018.
Two years later he joined the House of Lords, where he revealed in October 2021 that he was terminally ill and had spent time in a hospice.
The admission was made in a statement that called for the laws on assisted dying to be relaxed.
Yesterday his family confirmed Lord Field of Birkenhead died in a London care home on Tuesday night.
He is survived by two brothers.
A statement said: “Through a long battle with cancer, Frank Field remained resilient and engaged with life until the end. He will be enormously missed by his family and wide circle of friends.
“Frank was an extraordinary individual who spent his life fighting poverty, injustice and environmental destruction. His decency and faith in people’s self-interested altruism made a unique contribution to British politics.
“After 40 years of dedicated public service, Frank will be mourned by admirers across the political divide. “But above all, he will be deeply missed by those lucky enough to have enjoyed his laughter and friendship.”
Tributes for the political veteran poured in, with Mr Sunak saying: “Frank Field was a decent, moral and thoughtful man. He was a great parliamentarian – he made our politics better and raised the level of national debate in this country.”
Sir Keir said: “Frank dedicated his life to being a voice for the most vulnerable and marginalised people in the country. Frank was principled,
courageous and independentminded.” Former home secretary Dame Priti Patel said: “Frank was a kind and compassionate man and a great parliamentarian.
“His unwavering moral compass, commitment to working cross-party and unshakable principles defined him and will be greatly missed.”
Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle said: “As a former colleague, I watched in admiration as Frank Field navigated a career as a formidable MP, and as a minister, tasked with ‘thinking the unthinkable’ on social care.
“He was neither cowed by the establishment or whips – which made his campaigns against hunger and food poverty, for climate change and for the church even more effective.
“He was the driving force behind Parliament’s commitment toprevent slavery and human trafficking. I am in no doubt his efforts saved many lives nationwide.”
As PM, Sir Tony Blair gave Lord Field a ministerial job with a remit to “think the unthinkable” on welfare reform.
Yesterday Sir Tony hailed him as an “independent thinker never constrained by conventional wisdom but always pushing at the frontier of new ideas.
“Even when we disagreed, I had the utmost respect for him as a colleague and a character,” he added.
Clashes
“Whether in his work on child poverty or in his time devoted to the reform of our welfare system, he stood up and stood out for the passion and insight he brought to any subject.”
Lord Field took his seat in the upper chamber in October 2020 after being elected 10 times to represent Birkenhead between
1979 and 2019.
He served as welfare reform minister in the first Blair government in 1997 and went on to chair the Work and Pensions Select Committee.
He remained in the post of welfare reform minister for little over a year following policy clashes with the prime minister and then Chancellor Gordon Brown. He was also a member of the Labour Leave group that campaigned for Brexit.
Along with three Labour colleagues he sided with the Conservatives in a crunch Brexit vote in 2018. It saw him accused of betrayal, leading to him losing a no-confidence vote within his Birkenhead constituency Labour Party, although he insisted he was defending working-class Brexit voters.
He later resigned the whip over antisemitism and “nastiness” in the party under Jeremy Corbyn.
Last February, he was cheered as he made his first appearance in the House of Lords for almost two years, arriving in the chamber in a wheelchair to pledge allegiance to the King.
Lord Field was given an honorary fellowship by Liverpool John Moores University, granted the freedom of the Borough of Wirral and appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour. He also served on the boards of the charities Cool Earth, Feeding Britain and the Frank Field Education Trust.
The Child Poverty Action Group, which he had been a director of, said he was a “true champion for children and low-income families”.
Chief executive Alison Garnham added: “As director, Frank helped pave the way for the minimum wage, free school meals and rent allowances for low-income families; all fundamental social protections.”
THE DEATH of Frank Field, who succumbed to cancer aged 81, has been met with an outpouring of tributes from across the political spectrum. The former Labour minister and welfare campaigner was known for being one of the most effective backbenchers in the House of Commons.
While he may have played down his achievements in his final interview with the Express last year, his work – which included tackling child poverty and modern slavery, as well as thinking the unthinkable over welfare reform in Tony Blair’s first government – solidified his reputation as a titan among his peers.
His death marks the passing of yet another political heavyweight. And with it, an overwhelming sense that his generation of statesmen is dying – only to be replaced by spineless, selfinterested charlatans.
How many British politicians today command Lord Field’s kind of cross-partisan respect?
Respect that came not because he held the “right” opinions or had the most scathing “takedowns” of his opponents, but because he was authentic – an honourable man with conviction and decency.
You always knew where he stood on issues – not flitting here and there like a leaf in the wind, eager to follow the trendiest luxury belief. Sadly, I never got the chance to meet the remarkable Lord Field. But I greatly admired him.
BEING a staunch socialist and Brexiteer in the Blair cohort must have made him somewhat of an outlier. Yet his principles never shifted – so much so that he resigned the Labour whip in 2018, calling Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership “a force for antisemitism in British politics”.
You would struggle to find statesmen like Frank Field or Alistair Darling, the former Labour chancellor who died last year, in Westminster now. It might be easier to teach a monkey to tango than to find a politician today who can be described as having an “unwavering moral compass”.
Our political class is too often mired with sleaze, incompetence, or a complete lack of integrity. Take Conservative MP William Wragg, who is at the heart of a sexting scandal for giving the personal phone numbers of his colleagues to a man he met on a gay dating app.
Or former Labour MP Jared O’Mara, jailed over a £52,000 fraud whose tenure was marred by allegations of misogyny and homophobia. And, more recently, Mark Menzies, the Tory MP caught up in the latest Westminster sleaze scandal?
He was forced to resign for allegedly using political donations to cover medical expenses and pay off “bad people” who locked him in a flat and demanded thousands of pounds for his release. You couldn’t make this up.
So why do our political parties suffer from such low-calibre politicians? Out of 67 million people, are these 650 MPs the best our parties can really do?
If our politicians aren’t doing consulting work for businesses, they are pulling cheap media stunts to boost their profile and lining up their next post-election quango role. MPs with side-hustles are too numerous to count.When not working for their constituents, many are too busy obsessing over what social media will make of their latest “wrongthink”.
Increasingly, the people who represent us are more worried about gaining social media clout than pleasing their own constituents. And that is only scratching the surface. Remember when our politicians were motivated by public duty and service? No more. Just look at the 63 Tory MPs planning to step
down at the next general election. Their average age is 56.6, much lower than that of retiring Labour MPs, 70.1.
Unlike Lord Field, who spent 40 years as an MP, these politicians are backing away in anticipation of defeat like rats fleeing a sinking ship. This says a lot about the types of upstarts that we have in politics today. These people are more interested in self-preservation and glorification than public service.
AND IT shows. Not only is the reputation of Parliament suffering for it, but it has also entrenched the kind of short-term thinking in public policy that is more interested in vote-winning than planning for the future.
Our politicians are too spineless to say what they really think for fear of rocking the boat. That Keir Starmer still struggled to define what a woman is should be a source of embarrassment. Of course, not all politicians are the same. But this current crop does not help themselves with some of the things that they say and do.
Britain would be in a much better place if more of them had even a fraction of Lord Field’s honesty and integrity.
‘Remember when our politicians were motivated by public duty?’