LABOUR will step up its election campaign to oust MP Esther McVey when Harriet Harman brings their "pink bus" to Wirral this week.

The deputy leader of the Labour Party will join Margaret Greenwood, candidate for Wirral West, to launch the "Woman to Woman" tour of the region.

Wirral West has become a key political battleground, and media attention will grow as the May 7 polling day draws near.

Last week, Sir Tony Robinson visited the constituency to persuade voters to choose Ms Greenwood.

Sir Tony, who played Baldrick in the Blackadder saga and has since served on Labour’s National Executive Committee, used the occasion to say: "I think the bedroom tax is one of the most offensive taxes since the poll tax; the idea that 400,000 disabled people should receive such a negative impact is obscene."

The constituency has also been targeted by Wirral TUC.

The “Sack Esther McVey” drive is attacking the Government employment minister over her role in the benefit sanctions policy.

Wirral TUC began their co-ordinated efforts last July with a demonstration outside the Open Golf championship at Hoylake.

Ms Harman will highlight new figures showing the impact of the "cost of living crisis on women in Wirral West" - claiming that women here are £3,000 worse off than in 2010.

She will meet women to discuss what they want from Government and "highlight Labour’s commitments to women including helping them balance work with caring commitments, promoting flexible working, and coping with the cost of living crisis."

Ms McVey has been in the limelight more or less since her election victory in May, 2010. 

The former television presenter was promoted from the backbenches in 2012 when she became Under Secretary State for Disabled People.

Last year, she became minister for employment and was given the privilege of attending Cabinet by the Prime Minister.

She sparked a media storm last week when, pressed for an answer on ITV's daytime show Loose Women, she said she would like to be Prime Minister - an admission that is seen as taboo in Parliamentary circles.

Most politicians dodge the question of whether they would like the top job for fear of seeming to undermine their current leader.

During the television appearance, she also expressed concern of negative Conservative advetisements about Labour leader Ed Miliband - and predicted the campaign against her would become "very personal."

“I don’t do that and I don’t agree with that and I’ve never personalised anything,” she said.

“Where I come from, from a very different point of view, it’s a Labour heartland, it’s a trade union heartland, and I’ll have a very personal campaign against me there. So I don’t believe in that at all.”

A Labour statement said new figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal that average annual wages for women in Wirral West have fallen by £2,897 since 2010, leaving women and their families poorer.