Frank’s Westminster Blog

A few hundred Birkenhead residents out of 68,000 voters across the town wrote with their views on last week’s vote on Syria. Correspondence with local residents is always important to me as you are always actively lobbying me on a number of topics. Very few of those writing to me last week showed alarming ignorance over my work as their Member of Parliament. One even suggested I should pay the food bank a visit. His ignorance blinded him to the work I’ve been doing with our food

I will be supporting a bill on Friday which seeks to give local authorities the powers they need to stop cars parking on pavements. The problem of pavement parking is particularly acute in some of Birkenhead’s residential streets where the pavements are so narrow and parking spaces so few. The Pavement Parking Bill, which I have co-sponsored, sets out to help the blind, the elderly and mums with pushchairs and young children whose lives are put at risk by rows of cars parked on the…

A look at the waiting times for treatment at Arrowe Park tells us everything about the financial pressures on the NHS that will blow it apart by the end of this Parliament. While many patients find they receive better healthcare away from hospital, Arrowe’s own financial black hole has led it to try and pull in health services from the community. With the NHS facing a financial black hole of £30 billion by 2020, this reversion to the 1948 model of hospital-based care will continue

A few weeks ago I put forward a cost-free emergency proposal to protect the poorest workers from the Government’s planned cuts to tax credits. The Chancellor of the Exchequer signalled at the time that there would be no extra money to ease the pain, but the debate has moved on since then. Both Houses of Parliament have voted to halt to the planned cuts. MPs unanimously supported my Commons Motion calling on the Chancellor to compensate low earners. This hiatus gives the Chancellor an…

The Prime Minister this week committed his government to improving the adoption process for children in care. A very welcome campaign and one deserving of public recognition. But I recently met a group of carers in Birkenhead whose efforts often go without such recognition. I refer here to those grandparents who take on the duty of looking after their grandchildren who might otherwise be taken into care. Their intervention makes a huge difference to the lives of their grandchildren, some of…