Birkenhead MP Frank Field aims to canvas support for Speaker bid

Jun 3 2009 Bromborough and Bebington News

BIRKENHEAD MP Frank Field is canvassing support for a bid to become Commons Speaker.

He wants to clean up Parliament following the MPs’ expenses scandal, but he will only officially stand if he is guaranteed cross-party backing.

“There is no point going in for it if a new Speaker can’t muster whole-hearted support,” the former welfare minister and arch-critic of the government said.

“We have to be serious about genuine reform if Parliament is to regain the trust of the electorate. To do that the next Speaker must be able to act with authority.”

Mr Field will test out personal support over the next three weeks up until the eve of the Westminster election to replace Speaker Michael Martin, blamed for failing to introduce reforms which might have averted the present furore.

Other potential candidates are Tories: Ann Widdecombe, backbench rebel John Bercow, current deputy Speaker Sir Alan Hazelhurst and former minister Sir George Young.

Given that the outgoing Speaker is Labour, Mr Field will have to persuade fellow MPs that his independent qualifications on the Labour back benches make him a realistic interim option.

He has emerged as second favourite behind Ms Widdecombe among voters and on-line punters, but the election is among MPs only.

“I will have to see if my colleague’s constituents sway them to support me,” he said.

Mr Field, 66, was a Conservative party member in his youth but left over South African apartheid during the 1960s.

He was director of the Child Poverty Action Group from 1969 to 1979 when he was elected to his safe Labour seat on the Mersey.

During the long opposition years Michael Foot appointed him education spokesman, and leadership successor Neil Kinnock made him a health frontbencher. He held both portfolios for a year.

After Tony Blair’s 1997 election landslide he became minister for welfare reform with a brief to “think the unthinkable”.

But he clashed bitterly with then-Chancellor Gordon Brown and then-social security secretary Harriet Harman and after a year he was again on the backbenches.

Since then he has been a ferocious and effective critic of the government on benefits and pension reform, anti-social behaviour, Foundation hospitals and unchecked immigration.

Last year he led the successful rebellion against Chancellor Alistair Darling’s abolition of the 10p tax rate, and he also backed calls for a devolved English Parliament.