Once described as a "thorn in the side of legislators", the loss of Frank Field will be keenly felt by pensioners, WASPI campaigners and pension scheme members alike.
The former Labour MP for Birkenhead previously served as chairman of the social security select committee from 1990 to 1997 and minister for welfare reform.
He fell out with the then early Blair government over pension proposals, and then in 1999 he was involved in setting up the Pensions Reform Group, aimed at abolishing pensioner poverty.
Political fairness
In 2015 he was elected as chairperson of the Work and Pensions select committee and was a strong critic of the way in which the Conservative government was shoehorning pension reforms through the legislature.
As reported at the time, he said: "The committee is very disappointed with the government’s response to the report produced by our predecessors on auto-enrolment.
“The government has had more than two months since the election to pull together a full response, and has failed miserably to do so."
In 2016, he grilled disgraced retail tycoon Philip Green over the collapse of the BHS pension scheme, stating: "He doesn’t only have to satisfy The Pensions Regulator; today he is before the bar of public opinion. Much of his reputation now depends on how generously he responds."
Field also supported a bill through Parliament in 2016 to strip Green of his knighthood, although the vote was purely symbolic.
In 2016, Field threw his support behind the Waspi women's campaign, claiming they had been "strung along for too long", and recommended proposals by the Labour government at the time as a "practical, possible way forward", as he reiterated at a 2017 conference.
British Steel
But in 2017 he also turned his attention to thousands of British steelworkers, who had been lured out of their gold-plated defined benefit pensions.
Speaking to FT Adviser in 2019, he turned his ire on the regulators for failing to act, as well as on the "scammers" who took advantage of the men and women who had been targeted.
He said: "British steelworkers were roundly failed by the official regulators meant to protect their life savings.
"They were given precious little to guide them through murky waters filled with scammers looking to snatch their pensions – scammers who had little to fear from the FCA’s grossly inadequate action at the time.
"Now it seems they are being sold short again on what even the FCA calls 'rightly' deserved compensation."
Even when he started to be in poor health, he continued with his campaigning stance.
In 2022, together with Baroness Ros Altmann, Field - who received his Knighthood in the 2022 New Years Honours List - was pushing the government to act to protect Britons suffering as a result of the cost-of-living crisis.
He called the energy crisis that unfolded as a result of Russia's illegal war on Ukraine as "a Dunkirk moment", and lambasted the government - which at the time was too busy trying to choose between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak - for failing to act.
