The parliamentary office of Frank Field has announced that the former Work and Pensions Committee (WPC) chair and Labour MP has died aged 81.

Lord Field was the MP for Birkenhead for 40 years and was a champion of welfare reform during his time in parliament.

He was WPC chair between 2015 and 2019, working on several policy areas including defined benefit pension regulations and The Pensions Regulator’s activities and powers, as well as inquiries into crises such as Carillion and Arcadia.

Lord Field’s family issued a statement through his parliamentary office saying that he had remained “resilient and engaged with life” through a long battle with cancer.

“Frank was an extraordinary individual who spent his life fighting poverty, injustice and environmental destruction,” the statement read.

“His decency and faith in people’s self-interested altruism made a unique contribution to British politics. After 40 years of dedicated public service, Frank will be mourned by admirers across the political divide.”

Lord Field was a Labour MP until he stood as a candidate for the newly formed Birkenhead Social Justice Party in the December 2019 election, after resigning the Labour Party whip in August 2018.

During his time as a Labour MP, he served as Minister for Welfare Reform in Tony Blair’s first term as Prime Minister.

Lord Field was awarded a life peerage in 2020 and sat in the House of Lords as a crossbencher.

In 2022, Lord Field was appointed to the Companion of Honour in the New Years Honours List in recognition of his public and political service.

Former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, paid tribute to Lord Field, saying he had “integrity, intelligence and deep commitment to the causes he believed in”.

“He was an independent thinker never constrained by conventional wisdom, but always pushing at the frontier of new ideas,” Blair said.

"Even when we disagreed, I had the utmost respect for him as a colleague and a character.

"Whether in his work on child poverty or in his time devoted to the reform of our welfare system, he stood up and stood out for the passion and insight he brought to any subject.”

LCP partner and former Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, also paid tribute, saying "“the world of parliament, pensions and public life is lessened today by the loss of Frank Field".

"I first met Frank more than 30 years ago when I was a young economist and his support and engagement first got me involved in the world of Westminster," he continued.

"Although Frank was passionate about all the causes he believed in, he was not a ‘tribal’ politician and was willing to work with people of all parties in support of causes that he believed in.

Frank set the gold standard for how to run an all-party Select Committee. As chair of the Work and Pensions Committee he used his position to hold the powerful to account and was particularly effective in support of members of the BHS pension scheme.

“Frank had that rare combination of compassion, anger about injustice and deep policy expertise which made him such an effective campaigner. His campaigning spanned early work with the Child Poverty Action Group to working for pensions justice on a range of issues in parliament. He was valued around the House of Commons and his contributions were always listened to with respect. He will be much missed."

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