Frank’s Blog

Birkenhead needs to get people back to work. We have hundreds of people who have been on the dole for more than two years and in parts of Birkenhead one in five young people are out of work and not in education. Creating jobs is no easy task. Aside from a fluke era of full employment following the Second World War, the normal state of the British economy is one of high unemployment. And it is areas like ours that are generally the first to suffer. We can’t afford to wait…

The government’s cuts could cripple Wirral. We are fortunate therefore that, in Phil Davies, we have a leader who is looking at how to spend smartly, whatever budget the council has. But the government is cutting a £300m grant by £127m. One of the dilemmas facing the council is how to save £400,000 from the Williamson’s budget.The longer we put these decisions off, the more I fear our local treasures like the Williamson could be lost. The challenge is…

The Bedroom Tax is the most vicious and iniquitous ‘reform’ I have seen in my 34 years as an MP. The reform has had a crippling effect on thousands of families across the country. I wouldn’t under normal circumstances advocate any breach of the law, but on this issue I have actively encouraged landlords to do all they can to beat the Bedroom Tax by bricking up doors and knocking down walls. I helped lead the debate so that we gained a commitment from the Labour leadership to…

A month ago I wrote in the Wirral News about the £1.50 charge I paid to get some money out of the cash point at the general store in Rock Ferry. I can well afford a rip-off charge, but I couldn’t if I was living on a low income.   Since then I have been busy finding out just how widespread this injustice is. It turns out that one in three cash machines charge for withdrawals in Wirral. Worse still, people on low incomes are hit hardest. More than half of all cash…

The Government has quite rightly sought to regulate the scrap metal trade. In its recent Scrap Metal Dealers Act, the Government extended the cash ban on scrap metal dealers to collectors of scrap cars. It has done this with the intention of making it harder for rogue or illegal car dealers to operate, in the hope that this will protect consumers as well as taxpayers in the long run. But there is an unsavoury twist. Some law-abiding companies, like those in Birkenhead who have…