Frank Field recognised the danger of Britain’s sick note culture

With his own constituency ravaged by unemployment, he consistently warned that “benefit dependency”, the sustaining of millions of households entirely on welfare payments in perpetuity, was “degrading” and “economically unsustainable” – seriously annoying more statist Labour MPs.

Field spent brief periods on the shadow front bench during the 1980s, under Labour leaders Michael Foot and then Neil Kinnock – but he was too independent and outspoken for the party hierarchy.

Instead, he made his mark chairing the Commons’ social security select committee for a decade from 1987. Combining forensic knowledge with sharp public questioning, Field forced Robert Maxwell’s estate to pay back hundreds of millions of pounds in employee pension contributions the late tycoon had used in a bid to re-finance his business.

Field pulled a similar trick in 2016, again as a select committee chairman, subjecting Philip Green to an extended Parliamentary grilling, with the retail billionaire agreeing to pay over £350m towards the BHS pension deficit.

During his long public policy career, Field wrote dozens of detailed books and pamphlets on benefits policy and pensions. Despite so little time as a minister, his influence on these subjects was huge – with Field acting as an unofficial adviser to a succession of cabinet ministers working in this area, at their request, whatever their party.

Having studied his writing closely, and co-authored books and papers with him myself, I would argue that Frank Field, despite the political brickbats he endured, was probably the UK’s most influential welfare policy thinker since William Beveridge – who wrote, of course, the famous 1942 report launching Britain’s welfare state.

So what would the UK policy landscape look like had he prevailed and consolidated his power during the New Labour years?

Field’s principle aim in government – “thinking the unthinkable”, as Blair asked him – was to restore the contributory principle, compelling workers to pay into their own individual “pension pots” run by new mutual societies, on top of the basic state pension. Widely admired by industry experts, these ideas were diluted into today’s far less ambitious, employer-based “stakeholder” pension schemes.

Had Field prevailed, perhaps the public finances would now be stronger, with millions of poorer pensioners benefitting from the income-boosting impact of compound interest and long-term investment returns.

Perhaps the UK would now have the 10p starting rate of tax which Field designed, helping to ease financial disincentives to work as the low-paid move from benefits into employment. Instead, workers currently pay no tax on earnings up to £12,571, after which they pay 20p in the pound, making the shift into work much harder.