British Politician. Member of Parliament for Birkenhead for forty years, from 1979-2019, Member of the House of Lords 2020-2024. He joined the Conservatives in his youth, but left the party in 1980 because of his opposition to apartheid in South Africa and joined the Labour Party. At 22, he became a teacher and served as a Labour Councillor before being elected to Parliament at the 1979 general election. When Labour came to power under Tony Blair in 1997, he was made Minister for Welfare Reform, but resigned a year later after clashes with the Chancellor, Gordon Brown. After leaving ministerial office, he joined the ecclesiastical and the public accounts select committees in the House of Commons. As a backbencher, he became a vocal critic of the government, rebelling over tax rates and calling for a devolved parliament for England. He also made it known that he did not believe Labour could win an election under the leadership of Gordon Brown, and was unafraid of being unpopular within his own party. In 2013 he established the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Hunger and Food Poverty, which he went on to chair and also became the chair of trustees of Feeding Britain, a charitable organisation set up to implement the recommendations made by the APPG. In 2018, he lost a confidence vote from the Labour Party in his constituency, after siding with Conservative government in crucial Brexit votes. In August 2018 he resigned the Labour whip because, he said, Labour was "increasingly seen as a racist party" and due to the "culture of intolerance, nastiness and intimidation" in parts of the party. He described himself as an "independent Labour MP" and in 2019 he announced that he was forming a new party, the Birkenhead Social Justice Party, for which he stood in the December 2019 General election, losing to the Labour Party candidate by a large margin. After his Commons career, he was appointed as a Deputy Lieutenant for Merseyside and was awarded the Langton Award by the Archbishop of Canterbury "for sustained and outstanding commitment to social welfare". He was nominated for a life peerage and took his seat in the House of Lords as Baron Field of Birkenhead in September 2020. He had a reputation for being an intellectual, a free-thinker and a maverick in the Parliamentary Labour Party. Inspired by his Christianity, he took a socially conservative stance on various issues including preservation of the traditional family, action against antisocial behaviour, a belief in controlled immigration and pragmatic welfare reform. A staunch believer in fighting climate change, he co-founded the charity Cool Earth, campaigning to protect endangered rainforests. He never married, describing himself as "incomplete" but was said by friends to live a "a full life outside politics". He was made Companion of Honour in the New Year's Awards in January 2022. He suffered ill health from around 2015, and lost his battle to cancer nine years later.