Best interview I’ve ever seen is Field reminiscing about his year at DWP. Blair told to cut welfare so he said ‘in real terms, cash terms or GDP’, Blair looled blank so Field offered to write him a memo which Blair took. Next day Field found a note on his table say ‘just cut welfare’

Yh he was instructed: ‘think the unthinkable’, and when he did he was promptly fired.

What did Field actually propose when he was at the DWP?

Of all the de-selected MPs who fought their constituencies as independents – and heavily lost as nearly all did – Field’s result surprised me the most.

He had been MP here for a long time, was well known and well liked. He might have pipped the Tories to second place but 17% of the vote seems like thin pickings

“What did Field actually propose when he was at the DWP?”

1. Field has consistently argued against means testing of welfare, saying that paying benefits to the middle class (eg child benefit) gives them a stake in the system and solidifies support for helping those who really need it.

2. Field has consistently been in favour of schemes to get people to work for their benefit rather than leaving them to fester on the dole.

3. Field was a critic of forcing mothers, especially single mothers, back to work when they would have preferred to stay at home looking after their kids.

Field’s proposals would have cost a lot more money in the short term in the hope of savings and fewer social problems in the long term…Blair and the Treasury wouldn’t accept them due to the short term cost.

Ironically IDS resigned over a similar disagreement with Osborne and Cameron.

Yes the IDS resignation was an interesting one and gave a real insight into cameroonisms attitude to welfare. IDS was a proper free marketter who really saw PIP for what it really was, going after disability benefit while continuing to defend wintervfuel allowance and triple lock on pensions

Field’s suggestions sound perfectly reasonable – even more so at the time I would imagine after decades of high unemployment and this was prior to the new deal and other Government schemes requiring claimants to earn their welfare payments.

What I don’t see is how that was thinking the unthinkable

I agree.

At the time, even very minor changes from Thatcherite orthodoxy (slight increases in income tax for example) did seem like “thinking the unthinkable”.

HH is right at the time we had a Labour government that had committed to two years of Conservative spending plans and no increase in income taxation

As well as setting up the Frank Field Educational Trust, Frank has now endorsed the Free Speech Union.

From what I can see it is an all-Party group established by Toby Young, the former chair of the Equality & Human Rights Commission Trevor Phillips etc.

Lord Field of Birkenhead has said it was the best Budget in his 42 years in politics – for both the hour and long-term prosperity.

Polls also showed it was favourably received.

Budgets always poll well on the Wednesday and then deteriorate as the details the government didn’t want you to see surface on the Thursday and Friday.

(Not necessarily a criticism of this particular budget or of the Conservative Party. Budgets are hard, a budget is like a hundred spinning plates, the media won’t give you much credit for keeping ninety-nine of them going, they will focus on the one that drops on the floor. George Osborne was always very good at making sure the dropped plate that got the attention was something trivial like the pasty tax, not something that filled voters with righteous anger like a pay freeze for public servants in a year where they have faced increased workloads and occupational health hazards.)

42 years is probably the time the country paid a share of tax as large as proposed in this budgrt