Frank Field, MP and welfare reformer, 1942-2024

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Despite four decades in the House of Commons, Frank Field was a minister for little more than a year and never reached the Cabinet. But the death of the former Labour MP from cancer, aged 81, has generated an outpouring of heartfelt tributes from across the political spectrum.

“Frank was a kind and compassionate man and a great parliamentarian,” remarked Priti Patel, a former home secretary on the right of the Conservative party. She went on to praise his “unshakable principles”. Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting used very similar words. “Frank was a great parliamentarian, a crusader for social justice,” he said.

Field was a grammar-school boy, born into a working-class family in west London in 1942. Blessed with energy and intellect, he was the first in his family to attend university, building a reputation in the 1960s and 70s as a formidable anti-poverty campaigner.

An old-school Christian socialist, Field championed mutual, rather than state-centred, approaches to poverty relief and welfare. His views were informed above all by his experiences in Birkenhead, a Merseyside constituency ravaged by unemployment, where he was MP from 1979 to 2019.

A noted authority on Victorian philanthropists, Field believed strongly in helping the poor help themselves by ensuring paid work was available, and railed against over-reliance on an ever-expanding welfare state. But questioning the economic feasibility, and morality, of sustaining millions of households on state subsidy in perpetuity was — and remains — controversial, particularly within the Labour party.

During his early years in parliament, Field endured numerous aggressive attempts by Trotskyite Militant Tendency activists in Birkenhead to deselect him. His battles against Militant, he said, “put steel in [his] soul”.

During the 1980s, Field briefly served on the front bench under both Michael Foot and then Neil Kinnock. But he was too independent and outspoken for the party hierarchy. So he focused instead on helping his constituents directly, lobbying prime minister Margaret Thatcher for defence contracts to sustain Birkenhead’s Cammell Laird shipyard, then a major local employer. Working with Tory MPs representing nearby constituencies, Field got his way — winning him huge plaudits in his constituency but offending tribal sensitivities inside the Labour party.

It was as chair of the House of Commons social security select committee from 1987 that Field came to national prominence. Combining forensic knowledge with political street smarts, he forced the family of Robert Maxwell to pay back hundreds of millions of pounds in employee pension contributions the late tycoon had used to prop up his business.

He pulled off a similar trick years later in 2016, subjecting Philip Green to an hours-long parliamentary grilling, persuading the retail tycoon to pay £363mn towards the BHS pension deficit.

When Tony Blair brought Field into government in 1997, there was hope Britain would finally tackle the long-term sustainability of its welfare system. As minister for welfare reform, Field wanted to restore the contributory principle, with workers paying into and owning individual “pension pots” run by new mutual societies, on top of the basic state pension.

Widely admired among industry experts, his ideas were too bold for New Labour’s leadership, particularly then chancellor Gordon Brown. Had they been adopted, perhaps the UK’s public finances would be stronger, with millions of poorer pensioners benefiting from the income-boosting impact of compound interest and long-term investment returns.

Walking with him in his Birkenhead constituency, as I did several times, I watched numerous constituents laud and even embrace him, for “fighting for Birkenhead”. But my abiding memory of Field dates from 2009 and a Westminster drinks party celebrating his 30th year in parliament.

With the cross-party event in full swing, the room went silent as an elderly Thatcher entered, in what turned out to be one of her final public appearances. “He’s a good man,” she cried at the top of her voice, pointing towards Field. “I’m here because I admire him,” she added, to cheers from the other guests.

For all the talk of his awkwardness, Field, in his rejection of the tribalism, expedience and often dishonesty which dominates the UK’s public policy debates, held out the hope of a more collaborative, less myopic politics.

That is why the response to his death — from parliamentarians and public alike — has been so heartfelt.