Frank’s Westminster Blog

Come Thursday, we all have a chance to vote about the future of our country. I am voting on balance for our country to Leave the EU, but I totally respect people who will come to a different conclusion. For me, the issue is one which boils down to control of our borders. That is not simply because we need to be able to regulate the numbers of people coming to this country to work, and will thereby naturally bring their families. Any country needs to know how many people are likely to be…

I was really pleased last week to meet with a guide dog owner who had travelled down to Parliament from Birkenhead. Over 100 guide dog owners from across the country came to Westminster to talk to their MPs about the discrimination they face each day as they go about their lives. On the back of my conversation with our Birkenhead resident, I am supporting the charity Guide Dogs’ “Access All Areas” campaign to ensure guide dog owners can carry out everyday activities, such as

The Work and Pensions Committee, which I chair, recently published an interim report on the communication of the new state pension. We recommended in the report that the cohort of women born in the 1950s, who did not receive adequate notice of the increase in their state pension age, should be given the right to draw their pension early but at a reduced rate. We made this proposal in the context of severe government spending constraint, in the hope that it may ameliorate some of the worst

During the General Election I was stopped by a constituent who lived on Dacre Hill. He was angry at the condition of his home – and many others on the estate – and how the damp had affected his son’s health. I visited along with the three Rock Ferry councillors and was appalled. Likewise, at our regular constituency meetings at the Town Hall, a group of residents from Crossways angrily presented the case for urgent action. Their estate had been allowed to run down as Magenta

The voluntary groups helping to feed Birkenhead’s hungry report that delays in the processing and payment of new benefit claims are a key driver of food bank use. Indeed, the national data show there are some appalling delays in the processing of new benefit claims which expose hundreds of thousands of people to hardship. I found this week from parliamentary answers that, nationally, 154,309 people between March 2015 and February 2016 waited more than 10 days for their Jobseeker’s