Political Career
He was elected as a councillor in the City of Salford for eight years in 1990. He was elected to the House of Commons at the 1997 general election for the newly created Wythenshawe and Sale East seat vacated by the retirement of Alf Morris, the former veteran Labour MP for Manchester Wythenshawe. Goggins held the seat with a majority of 15,019 and has remained the MP there since. He made his maiden speech on 20 May 1997.
He served on the social security select committee from 1997 until he was appointed as the Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Minister of State at the Department of Social Security John Denham in 1998, moving with Denham to the Department of Health in 1999.
In 2000 he was appointed PPS to the Secretary of State for Education and Employment David Blunkett, and he remained Blunketts's PPS following the 2001 General Election in his new position as Home Secretary. It is during this period that, according to Blunkett, Goggins was lumbered with the nickname 'Mrs Goggins'.
He was promoted to the government of Tony Blair in 2003, where he was made the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Home Office with the role of prisons and probation minister. He became the parliamentary under Secretary for State with responsibility for the voluntary and community sector. He forged links with various community and voluntary sector organisations such as ARVAC The Association for Research in the Voluntary and Community Sector. In May 2006, he was appointed as a junior minister at the Northern Ireland Office.
He is the co-founder of the All Party Parliamentary Friends of CAFOD group and is Secretary of the All Party Parliamentary Group on poverty.
Read more about this topic: Paul Goggins
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