Astonishing sum former Labour MP Frank Field left in his will to staff, charities and family of friends_Nhy
Former Labour MP Frank Field left more than £900,000 in his will with the bulk of his fortune going to his staff, charities and the families of friends.
Anti-poverty and social justice campaigner Lord Field of Birkenhead who lived in a flat in Westminster, never married, had no partner and did not drive or own a television until 2005.
His few indulgences were reported to include chocolate, an occasional bottle of Cloudy Bay wine and visiting a different church every Sunday for music.
The devout Anglican who served as a welfare minister in Tony Blair‘s Government and died aged 81 in April last year after battling prostate cancer left an estate of £904,929 reduced to a net figure of £885,347.
Probate records reveal that Lord Field who was known for his robust, maverick and sometimes right-wing views left £100,000 each to his housekeeper Beatrice Atako and his parliamentary researcher Daniel Sanchez.
The former MP who represented the struggling Merseyside constituency of Birkenhead for 40 years left another £20,000 to his secretary Jill Hendy and £1,000 each to his carers Maighread Condon and Nice Kiiza.
His clergyman friend, the rev Nicolas Spicer, was left £25,000. His will stated that the priest, along with his brother John Field, had been left a document setting out how he wanted his body ‘to be treated’ after his death.
The will also asked for his personal possessions to be distributed according to any memo that he might have left among his personal papers with ‘reasonable’ expenses for the ‘committal’ of his remains paid for from his estate.
Former Labour minister Frank Field died aged 81 in April last year after battling prostate cancer
Lord Field (pictured in 1973) served as an MP for 40 years from 1979 to 2019 before joining the House of Lords in 2020
The devout Anglican who served as a welfare minister in Tony Blair’s Government left an estate of £904,929 reduced to a net figure of £885,347
The rest of his estate was split into 11 parts with one part each going to the charities Cool Earth Action which Lord Field co-founded, and Feeding Britain based in Tufton Street, south west London.
Another part was left to the be spent on ‘the poorest children’s activities programmes’ at the three academies in the north of England run by the Frank Field Education Trust which he founded.
A further two parts was left to Andrew Forsey and Patrick White who were former heads of his Parliamentary office, and their respective wives.
One more part each was left to the children of Matthew Owen, a director of Cool Earth Action, and to the children of his author friend Liam Halligan.
The final four parts were split between his niece Rosie Field and his godchildren Alex Gee, Sally Meacher and Teresa Warren.
Lord Field, a former grammar school pupil, was famously known as a close friend of Margaret Thatcher, sharing her views on self-reliance, self-improvement and getting the poor off welfare.
He became director of the Child Poverty Action Group in 1969, making his name as a highly effective campaigner, and founded the Low Pay Unit in 1974, but he quit both positions after becoming MP for Birkenhead in 1979.
Field was one of the longest serving MPs in the House of Commons after surviving constant abuse, hostility at constituency meetings and attempts to deselect him by the Trotskyist group Militant Tendency that sought to infiltrate Labour in the 1980s.
Lord Field quit the parliamentary Labour party in 2018 after he had a row with then leader Jeremy Corbyn
He became chairman of the social services select committee, and later of the work and pensions select committee, and was made a minister under social security Harriet Harman with a brief to reform benefits in 1997 after Tony Blair swept to power.
Field quit the parliamentary Labour party in 2018, saying that it had become ‘a force for antisemitism in British politics’ under leader Jeremy Corbyn, and lost his seat at the General Election in 2019 when he stood as a Birkenhead Social Justice candidate.
But he then became Lord Field of Birkenhead and sat in the House of Lords after being made a crossbench peer in 2020.
He also served briefly as a shadow education spokesman under Michael Foot, and as a shadow health and social security spokesman under Neil Kinnock during his Parliamentary career, and published more than 50 pamphlets and booklets.
