LORD FIELD of Birkenhead DL, the former MP (Frank Field) and General Synod member, has been appointed a Companion of Honour in the New Year Honours list.
Lord Field served as Minister for Welfare Reform in Tony Blair’s government, but his political positions have been notably independent of party loyalties. Until 2019, he was chairman of the Work and Pensions Select Committee. He was a founder and for a time chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hunger and Food Poverty. He received his peerage in 2020.
He is a former chairman of the Churches Conservation Trust, the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England, and the King James Bible Trust, and served on the parliamentary Ecclesiastical Committee.
Lord Field has a terminal illness, and a statement from him was read out by Baroness Meacher in a Lords debate on her Assisted Dying Bill (News, 26 October).
Many awards in the latest list are for service during the pandemic, including knighthoods and damehoods for the most prominent figures such as Professor Chris Whitty and Emily Lawson. Among the many others named, there are Honours for 78 Olympians and Paralympians.
The former Prime Minister Tony Blair is appointed member of the Order of the Garter. He joins as a “knight companion”, and now becomes known as Sir Tony (not Sir Anthony).
Among the new Knights Bachelor is John Battle, the former MP, for political and public service. A Roman Catholic, he was the first director of Church Action on Poverty.
Sir John Battle
Among the CBEs is Sir Laurie Magnus, Bt, the chair of Historic England and a member of the Culture Recovery Board, who is also a trustee of the Allchurches Trust.
Among those appointed OBE are the Revd James Cruddas, Deputy Director of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and a Methodist minister with the West London Mission (for public service); Dr Mary Cusack and Dr Catherine Morris, two British doctors, linked to Trent Vineyard church in Nottingham, who 15 years ago moved from the UK and founded the children’s charity Love the One, in Berhampur, Odisha, India; Cardinal Michael Fitzgerald, the former Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, for services to interfaith and inter-Church partnerships; Dr Russell Rook, a founding partner of the Good Faith Partnership, for services to social action; the organisation was founded to improve mutual understanding between the state and the Church over issues such as the refugee crisis.
Also among the OBEs are Katie Piper (Kate Elizabeth Sutton) (Features, 5 November), founder of The Katie Piper Foundation, for services to charity and victims of burns and other disfigurement injuries; and Julius Wolff-Ingham, the Salvation Army’s head of marketing and fund-raising.
Among those appointed MBE are Margaret Bravo, who has run St Peter’s Pre-School, at St Peter’s, Carlisle, for more than 50 years; Peter Broadbent, director and conductor of the Joyful Company of Singers, which has performed many sacred and secular choral works; the Revd Steven Bunting, Vicar of St Thomas’s, Swansea, for charitable services to the community in Swansea, where he raised £1.4m to transform the church, which is now home to community initiatives which include a foodbank, Baby Basics, supporting new mothers and families, and a not-for-profit café; Andrew Carwood, director of music at St Paul’s Cathedral, who is also the founder conductor of The Cardinall’s Music, for services to choral music; Pippa Cramer, seniors minister at Holy Trinity, Claygate, and co-founder of the Church of England’s helpline The Daily Hope, for services to older and vulnerable people, particularly during Covid-19; the Revd Dr Samuel Grant, a Pentecostal minister in Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim, for services to the community there; Sister Margaret Harlock, a governor of the Roman Catholic St Brendan’s Sixth-Form College, Bristol; David Jonathan, director of the Grassroots Programme, Luton Council of Faiths, and Near Neighbours programme, for services to community cohesion and interfaith relations in Luton; Kaneez Khan, co-ordinator of Near Neighbours, West Yorkshire, and a member of the diocesan Wellsprings Together team in Leeds, for services to interfaith relations, particularly during Covid-19; Roger McFarland, for services to the community in Chelmsford, where he is a licensed lay minister at All Saints’, Springfield, and a member of the YMCA Essex board; Dr Dean Pallant, for services to the community through the Salvation Army, where he is the secretary for communications; the Revd Jonathan Swales, a mission priest of Lighthouse, West Yorkshire, based at St George’s, Leeds, and also a member of Christian Climate Action, who is honoured for his for services to the community in Leeds, particularly during Covid-19 (Lighthouse provides day centres for vulnerable people, and is also a Fresh Expression); Joy Tubbs, director of Salisbury Diocesan Board of Education, for services to education; Abeda Vorajee, for services to community integration and interfaith understanding in Warwickshire. A Muslim, she serves on the SACRE, has been a community champion in Nuneaton, and is on the governance committee of Queens C of E Academy; Canon David Wyatt and Helen Wyatt, for services to homeless people and to the community in Salford, Greater Manchester, where Canon Wyatt has been Rector of St Paul with Christ Church, Paddington, since 1968, and Priest-in-Charge of the Ascension, Lower Broughton, since 2005. The Ascension was gutted by fire in 2017, and has since been restored.
Diocese of BlackburnThe Revd Dr Susan Salt
Among those awarded the British Empire Medal are Julia Baines, teaching assistant at Margaret Clitherow Catholic School, Bracknell, for services to education for people with special educational needs and disabilities; Helen Beattie, for services to the Boys’ Brigade in Northern Ireland; John Bramham, chair of the Friends of Old Christ Church, Waterloo, Merseyside, for services to community heritage; Patricia Bridge, Quaker Chaplain at HM Prison Wandsworth, for services to prisoners; Stephen Chamberlain, founder of St Laurence’s Larder and Open Kitchen, at Christ Church with St Laurence, Brondesbury, for services to the community in the London Borough of Brent, particularly during Covid-19; Stephen Crawford, founder of Coaching for Christ, for services to young people in County Antrim; Gill Creed, who is very active at Swaffham Parish Church, in Norfolk, for services to fund-raising and to the community in Swaffham; the Revd Wayne Davies, assistant curate of St Laurence’s, Ludlow, in Shropshire, for services to the community in the town, particularly during Covid-19; the Revd Archie Ford, the Minister of the United Free Church in Lochwinnoch, Renfrewshire, for services to the community there; Johanna Geddes, for services to the Boys’ Brigade and to the community in Thurso, Caithness; the Revd Myles Godfrey, a retired priest and teacher in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, for services to the community in the county, where he was director of the Employment Action Group and the Berin Centre, in Berinsfield; the Revd Keith Osmund-Smith, Minister of Madeley Baptist Church, Lead Coordinator of Telford Street Pastors, West Mercia Police Chaplain, and Chaplain to the Shropshire and Telford Hospital Trust, for services to the community in Telford, Shropshire, particularly during Covid-19; the Revd Dr Susan Salt, an Assistant Curate in the Fellside Team Ministry, Lancashire, and a former consultant physician, who responded to the plea to former medical professionals to return to work in the NHS last year, and returned to Blackpool Teaching Hospital, supporting the intensive-care unit. Her medal is for services to the community in the diocese of Blackburn, particularly during Covid-19.
Also recipients of the BEM are the Revd Donald Smith, Rector of Frinton-on-Sea, in Essex, for services to the community there, particularly during Covid-19; Mark Strachan, of Sherborne, in Dorset, founder of The Choir of the Earth, originally the Self-Isolation Choir, in 2020, for charitable services to musicians during Covid-19. He originally wanted to do something to support choristers, and his online project burgeoned with international support, and has run numerous choral courses since.
Paul Vallely: Blair deserves knighthood, despite Iraq