Paul Goggins

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Paul Goggins (born 16 June 1953) is a British Labour Party politician. He is the Member of Parliament for Wythenshawe and Sale East, and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office.

Paul Goggins was born in Manchester and was educated locally at St Bede's College, before going on to study at the Roman Catholic seminary Ushaw College in Durham (1971-1973).

He went on to study at the Birmingham Polytechnic where he received a certificate in residential care of children and young people in 1976.

He later received a Certificate of Qualification in Social Work from the Manchester Polytechnic in 1982.

He worked as a child care worker with the Liverpool Catholic Social Services for a year in 1974, before becoming an officer in charge at the Wigan Children's Home in 1976. He was appointed as project director for the NCH Action for Children in Salford in 1984. He became the national director for Church Action in Poverty, a national church-based campaigning organisation, in 1989 where he remained until his election to Westminster.

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 (see [1]).

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.

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 (see [2]). 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. He has been married to Wyn Bartley since 1977 and they have two sons and a daughter.

He is a season ticket holder at Manchester City F.C. A member of the Christian Socialist Movement who has broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 Thought for the Day slot on the Today programme. In an interview on BBC Radio Five Live in 2004 he claimed that his family was the inspiration for the Mrs. Goggins character in the Postman Pat series (see [3]). The Manchester International Airport lies within his constituency boundaries.

Mr Goggins has in recent times used his ministerial position to promote legislation that would target many sadomasochists, fetishists and other sexual minorities by proposing to criminalise possession of so-called "extreme pornography".

Critics of his efforts maintain that any such move would be a clear violation of Human Rights under EU law[4], and would result in the persecution of disproportionately high numbers of the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual community. Mr Goggins himself, speaking on behalf of the Government, has argued that there is a responsibility to "reduce demand" for this kind of material, to protect both those who are abused in its making and the public.

His attempts to pass legislation in this regard are strongly opposed by a coalition of libertarian, free speech, and sexual minority action groups under the umbrella of the backlash campaign.

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by (new constituency)	Member of Parliament for Wythenshawe and Sale East 1997 – present	Incumbent