Paul Goggins obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jan/08/paul-goggins

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During his 16 years at Westminster, the Labour MP Paul Goggins was well-liked and respected by members of all political parties. Admired for his career-long commitment to childcare and social work issues, he rose to become a junior minister in the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He has died at the age of 60, a little more than a week after suffering from a suspected brain haemorrhage. At the time he was out jogging with one of his adult sons in his Wythenshawe and Sale East constituency.

Goggins's political life was deeply imbued by his Roman Catholicism and he initially started training for the priesthood. He was born in Manchester, the son of a medical worker, Rita Goggins, and her husband John, a headteacher. From St Bede's college, a Roman Catholic grammar school, he went to study for two years at Ushaw College in Durham, a seminary for trainee priests, and then at Birmingham Polytechnic, now Birmingham City University, where in 1976 he received a certificate in residential care of children and young people. He was a child care worker with Liverpool Catholic Social Services before being placed in charge of the local authority children's home in Wigan (1976-84) and serving as project director for the National Children's Homes (NCH) Action for Children charity in Salford (1984-89).

Before he entered parliament in the Labour electoral landslide in 1997, he was national director of the charity Church Action on Poverty. He served as a local councillor in Salford (1990-98), chaired the Manchester Labour party, and succeeded the long-serving disability rights campaigner Alf Morris in a redrawn constituency that includes large estates and more affluent Cheshire suburbs as well as part of Manchester airport. It is a safe Labour seat, though Goggins's majority was reduced to 7,575 in the 2010 general election.

Within a year of entering the Commons, Goggins was appointed a parliamentary private secretary to John Denham, minister of state at the Department of Social Security. He accompanied Denham to the Department of Health the following year, and then acted as PPS to David Blunkett at the Department of Education and then the Home Office. In 2003 he was made a junior minister in the department with responsibility for prisons and the probation service, and then the voluntary and community sector. In 2006 he was moved to the Northern Ireland office, and the following year became minister of state there: his work in the province was appreciated on all sides.

Following the 2010 election, he served as secretary for the all-party parliamentary group on poverty, and at the time of his death was also a member of the Commons intelligence and security committee. He campaigned in support of sufferers from cancer through exposure to asbestos, and in recent months did a lot of work on amendments to the government's current mesothelioma bill.

In 2012 he welcomed the opening of the Caritas Care adoption and fostering centre in Sale. As a Catholic, he found himself among the few Labour MPs to vote against the government's bill to legalise gay marriage last year, and he was a long-standing member of the Christian Socialist movement.

The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, said that "he was a man of deep faith whose commitment and strong values shone through everything he did". David Cameron, the prime minister, described him as "a kind and brilliant man who believed profoundly in public service".

Goggins was a dedicated supporter of Manchester City Football Club. He married Wyn Bartley in 1977. She and their daughter, Theresa, and two sons, Matthew and Dominic, survive him.

• Paul Gerard Goggins, politician, born 16 June 1953; died 7 January 2014

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