Frank's Westminster Blog

The 10p injustice returns to practical politics this week with Wednesday's Budget. This long drawn out and wretched saga, acts like a cautionary tale of the Government's loss of direction. The story is well known. In his last Budget Gordon Brown announced a 2p reduction in the standard rate of tax to be paid for, substantially, by the abolition of the 10p starting rate. While most people gained, there was a very significant number of lower paid workers who lost out. The Government, at...

Harold Wilson asserted that the Labour party was a moral crusade or it was nothing. The McBride affair has left Labour members looking at nothing. That is the reality check that McBride has wrought on the party. The whole of the government's energy should be spent on governing now and building a programme from which, within and year, we will be seeking permission to rule for another five years. Far from helping sketch out a new roadmap, the McBride activities shine a searchlight on the...

A good Lent reminds us that we're at another stage in the year, and another stage in our life. One of the failures of a society that has, in a sense, walked away from, or banished God, is that it does not have these regular points in the year where it is reminded about its own existence: the need to take stock, the need to make new beginnings. So, for example, if you think about baptism, in the First World War, most people being sent to the front were baptised. That was not only a sacrament, it

The Prime Minister deserves full marks for the sheer effort he put into the G20 summit. But . . . The summit has not agreed anything concrete on the central danger facing the world economy. The slump into which we have now been thrown is unique. Its origin lies in the banking system which has ricocheted into what some people like to call the real economy. Britain, let alone anywhere else, has yet to deal effectively with the toxic assets which are paralysing the banking system's...

The Clatterbridge Oncology Centre is under threat. That is the view of the local members of parliament. What is the threat and what are we doing about it? Sometime last year, the local members of parliament learned that the Merseyside Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) had initiated a study on cancer services in our area. Nothing wrong with that. Indeed, I applaud bodies that are proactive. But local MPs were not involved and, as it were, found out by accident. No marks there. The plan, as...