I am glad that so far there is a consensus regarding Frank Field. He is a decent and honourable man who is an expert on many social issues including the tax, benefits and welfare systems. And furthermore he is one of our own- a native Chiswickian !Frank Field was born on 16 July 1942 in Chiswick and was educated at St Clement Danes School, Hammersmith and the University of Hull.He has been the Member of Parliament for Birkenhead since 1979. Before that he was Director of the Child Poverty Action Group for ten years and of the Low Pay Unit for six years. He was appointed Privy Councillor in 1997 and served as Minister for Welfare Reform in the Labour Government from 1997 to 1998.Throughout his career he has campaigned for the reformation of welfare provision and a move away from impersonal approaches towards forms of mutual aid and social assistance that preserve human dignity and encourage independence and self-improvement. He has published a series of books challenging the political orthodoxies of welfare and pensions.Frank Field is a practising and active member of the Church of England and serves as Chairman of the Church Conservation Trust and a member of the Prayer Book Society.Asked to review and reform the welfare and benefits system by Tony Blair in 1997, he did what he was told and came up with the sort of solutions that have since been adopted in the USA by the Clinton and Bush administrations and in this country by the Conservatives.However, Frank Field's proposals were not acceptable to Chancellor Gordon Brown and the Old Labour Party personified by die-hard socialists like Ann Keen and Mr Blair was forced to drop Frank Field from his Government as early as in 1998 !Since then Gordon Brown has burden this country with an extremely expensive and inefficent system of tax, tax credits and benefits which has lead to millions claiming invalidity benefit, poor people paying income tax and at the same time depending on benefits, child benefit being paid in respect of children overseas who have never been in the country, huge numbers of people choosing to claim benefits rather than to work, massive disguised youth unemployment, huge numbers of pensioners struggling to live on one of the poorest state pensions in Western Europe and huge numbers of people coming into this country because the British immigration and benefits system is the most accessible and the softest touch in Europe. We now have hundreds of thousands more civil servants to adminster Mr Gordon Brown's complex and crazy schemes.They too deserve my sympathy because they would be much off doing something productive either in the private sector or in other parts of the public sector like the health or education services, the police or the armed forces.And as millions of these people all have votes, many of them feel they have to vote for Mr Brown and his acolytes like Ann Keen in order to maintain their pitiful situations.Gordon Brown is a pasdt master at bribing people with what should be their own money and keeping poor and dependent on the state so they vote Labour and keep himself and the Labour Party apparatchiks like Ann Keen in well paid jobs, unaccaounatble expenses and several homes at the taxpayers' expense.If Frank Field had been allowed by Gordon Brown to bring in the necessary reforms, the country and those in real need of state and social support would be in much better shape - 10 years on. Many people more people would have been lifted out of poverty and into jobs.Our health,education,and housing,police and prison services would not have been faced with such burdens and challenges. Our pensioners would be better treated with higher pensions and benefits. Taxes would be lower and not higher.Employment would have been stimulated. Taxation, the public sector debt and deficit would not be at such a colosal level. Personal debt would have been lower.And we would all be much freer and happier !
David Giles ● 6386d