News

A MERSEYSIDE MP is demanding answers from the local clinical commissioning group over plans to transform health services in the borough – which involves shutting walk-in and minor injuries centres.

The budget battle lines have been drawn between the Treasury, the Department for Work and Pensions and millions of people on low incomes.

The claim comes after Esther McVey, the work and pensions secretary, admitted last week families will be “worse off” under the new system

Frank Field, chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee has told Sky News he believes the government was hoping to hide the findings.

MP Frank Field, who chairs the Commons Work and Pensions Committee and leads tonight’s debate, will press schools Minister Nick Gibb to urge the Treasury to exempt all school uniform from VAT.

School uniforms should be made VAT-free to bring down their “rip-off” prices and boost social mobility, ministers will be urged this week. Frank Field, the independent MP, said ministers should end the school uniform “rip- off” and lift VAT from 13-14 year olds to 18 year olds for school clothes would help social mobility and poorer families.

By building on the Home-Start model with a programme that protects parents’ mental health, strengthens the bonds with their child, and fosters a first-class home learning environment, the country would give itself a fighting chance of preventing children born into disadvantaged homes becoming poor adults.

The report, by MP Frank Field and his assistant Andrew Forsey, paints a stark picture of a workforce where low wages, zero-hours contracts and disillusion are rife. Field, MP for Birkenhead, said it was “a scandal” that workers performing a key role in the lives of Britain’s growing elderly population were so poorly paid, hard-pressed and badly treated.

While Labour’s commitment of vast new sums towards preschool interventions is welcome, much more thought needs to be given to how they can be used most effectively to equalise children’s life chances. Much of the inequality that now exists between the life chances of children from relatively wealthy families and others from poorer backgrounds is accounted for by what happens at home – mainly in respect of the style of parenting and the home learning environment.

Frank Field MP today launches a major inquiry into the extent and consequences of ‘employment law evasion’ in the gig economy.

Frank Field MP launches inquiry examining law and enforcement as firms still ‘evade justice’ on worker rights

The town’s MP Frank Field told the Globe: “This news will give a tremendous boost to Birkenhead. “Six weeks ago, I wrote to Mike Ashley with an urgent plea to safeguard the future of our House of Fraser and the jobs of the store’s staff. “Thanks to the positive discussions that have taken place since then with the store’s landlord, this cornerstone of our town centre is being given a chance to flourish once again.”

The House of Commons debate, in which the previous Minister announced the creation of this Group, centred on the pay, working conditions and living standards of taxi and private hire drivers. This report addresses each of those important points.

Figures compiled after decade of austerity and obtained by Frank Field show most striking cuts are in disability benefits

Two very different verdicts on how Jeremy Corbyn will do in the next election

This month, the chairman of the Commons Work and Pensions Committee, Frank Field MP, wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, asking him to consider creating a consortium to buy up the loans. It is understood that the Commissioners were due to meet this week at Lambeth Palace to discuss the idea.

‘The Bedroom Tax snatches money back from social tenants who can’t move to smaller accommodation – often none is available. It is netting the Treasury around £1 million a year from poorer people in Birkenhead alone. Nearly three quarters of the households in Birkenhead who are penalised contain at least one person who is disabled.’

Frank Field on how the government could have filled the policy vacuum instead of waiting for Brexit

Birkenhead MP Frank Field has arranged a desperate meeting in a last-ditch attempt to save the town’s House of Fraser store from closure.

Frank Field, the independent MP and chairman of the Commons work and pensions committee, has written to the Archbishop of Canterbury asking him to use the church’s £7.8 billion investment fund to buy Wonga’s debt portfolio.

My plan was to sell dear, with the whole of a working-class family clubbing together to acquire an asset and, crucially, for councils to use all those monies to rebuild and repair stock. The Wilson and Callaghan governments undertook reviews of this idea but civil servants thought the plan unworkable.

The MP, a lifelong anti-poverty campaigner, appealed to rich philanthropists to step in and assist hard-up individuals ordered to repay loans in full, even though the payday lender has gone bust.

A depressing number of Britons are struggling to keep their heads above water

Last month, as the school holidays began, children and teachers breathed a sigh of relief. But at one school in Birkenhead, even as the bells rang to mark the end of term, staff were gluing children’s shoes together.

This country desperately needs minimum standards of employment to stop exploitation in the gig economy

Frank Field, the veteran MP who chairs the Commons’ work and pensions committee, has written to Stephen Haddrill, chief executive of the Financial Reporting Council, demanding to know why the regulator has not published its report.

Labour’s Frank Field, the committee chairman, said: “This is not the 1950s. Men and women work independently, pay taxes as individuals, and should each have an independent income.”

This is not the 1940s. Universal Credit unknowingly turns its back on decades of reform, which has tried to give carers of children, usually women, an income in their own right from the social security system.

The independent review is to be run by MPs Frank Field and Maria Miller and Baroness Butler-Sloss, the former president of the Family Division of the High Court.

Frank Field MP, who last year sponsored a private member’s bill to require local councils to provide free meals and activities for children during school holidays, said the fund represented “the single biggest national effort in decades specifically to improve poorer children’s access to meals and activities during the holidays”.