The son of a labourer now at the heart of power who wants to get Britain back to work

Pat McFadden's parents taught him the meaning of hard work - and now he wants to rescue Britain's youth from a life on benefits. His Irish parents left their native Donegal and settled in Scotland, working day and night to provide for their seven children, of which the Work and Pensions Secretary was the youngest.

Mr McFadden wants to see people across the UK embrace their work ethic today. His father left the family home early each morning to work as a labourer on building sites. As the future cabinet minister was getting ready to go out to school, his mother would return from her 10-hour night shifts in a children's care home.

At the weekends, after "a tough week", his dad would be back at work, "digging people's gardens and doing other jobs like that". Their example shaped Mr McFadden's life.

"I think we need that work ethic," he says. "We want young people to be working rather than sitting at home."

Mr McFadden was entrusted one of the most important jobs in Government in this month's cabinet reshuffle. Getting people into jobs is vital to ignite growth and bring down Britain's spiralling benefits bill.

He takes on this challenge with job vacancies falling, anxiety about unemployment and health and disability benefits forecast to hit £100billion by 2030.

The threat of a mass rebellion by Labour MPs in July forced Sir Keir Starmer to abandon plans which would have cut nearly £5billion off welfare payments. Mr McFadden may face another wave of opposition when a review of disability payments comes back, but few people in Parliament can match his knowledge of the Labour party and Whitehall.

He was a speechwriter for the late Labour leader John Smith and he worked as political secretary for Tony Blair. Sir Keir had him by his side as campaign coordinator ahead of last year's landslide election victory and he remains one of his most trusted lieutenants.

Labour's annual conference kicks off in Liverpool on Sunday amid chatter about Andy Burnham's leadership ambitions. As someone who had a close-up up view of the Blair-Brown rivalry which was such as factor in the New Labour years, the 60-year-old advises fellow Labour MPs not to fritter away this chance to change Britain.

"Labour victories have been not that frequent," he notes. "And so we need to make the most of periods in Government to really deliver lasting change.

"I think we've begun that. I think there's an awful lot more that we can do."

Does he think Sir Keir will lead Labour into the next general election?

"Yes, I do," he says. "I see a Prime Minister who has a great sense of duty to the country. I've worked very closely with him, both in the election campaign and over the last 14 months since the election.

"And I see him getting up in the morning to deliver for the British people every day."

If Labour succeeds in key areas such as bringing down NHS waiting lists, he argues, "that will get through to people amid all this sound and fury of politics".

His journey from Holyrood Secondary School on the south side of Glasgow to the cabinet table is proof of his personal ambition, and he has no doubt about what he wants to achieve in his new job.

"My top priority in here is to get young people into work," he says. "We've got almost a million people who are not in education, employment or training.

"And the last thing I want to see is young people graduating from school onto benefits."

He is excited at the expansion of "youth hubs" where young people receive help with interview and CV preparation. A new partnership with the Premier League is being rolled out to get youths into the hubs to ensure opportunities for work and training are not missed.

"They don't always want to come into the Jobcentre, so we'll bring the Jobcentre to them," he explains, adding: "The last thing we want is kids full of promise becoming adults full of frustration because they are on the dole."

His own ambitions sent him east to study politics in Edinburgh.

Sitting in his large office at the Department for Work and Pensions, he remembers this time clearly: "I felt a bit like a fish out of water when I arrived at Edinburgh University, to be honest. There were a lot of people there from wealthier backgrounds than I had.

"They probably had more social confidence than I had. And there weren't too many kids there whose dads were Irish labourers.

"But I just took my chance and worked hard. And you know, I've always tried to do that in whatever I'm doing.

"I turn up here every day and the mission I come in here with is: 'What can I do to get more employment opportunities for people and to make sure they get the chance to work?'"

His big break in politics came he secured a job working for Donald Dewar, who would become Scotland's first First Minister. This led to his role as a speechwriter for John Smith, who suffered a fatal heart attack in 1994.

"It was such a tragedy to lose him at such a young age," Mr McFadden says. "I think he was only about 55. I thought he was a great man, taken from the Labour Party and the country too young."

Does he think his old boss could have beaten John Major's Conservatives in a general election?

"Who knows what might have happened had he stayed on. It's one of the great unknowns."

Mr McFadden advised Tony Blair in Opposition and in Downing Street and swapped the backrooms of politics for the frontline in 2005, winning Wolverhampton South East. As a senior minister under Gordon Brown he worked closely with then-Business Secretary Lord Mandelson.

Does he see a way back for his former colleague, following his ejection as Britain's man in Washington DC?

"Oh, I don't know... The Prime Minister has made his decision and we have to move on from that."

The Government faces the immediate challenge of restoring the trust of pensioners who were angered by the shock decision last year to end universal entitlement to winter fuel payments. The Government u-turned in June, restoring the support those with an income of £35,000 or less, but Ipsos polling shows just 27% of Britons aged 55 to 75 would pick Sir Keir when asked to choose between a Government led by the present PM or Reform UK's Nigel Farage.

Mr McFadden does not deny the anger the debacle caused in the country, saying: "I think politics is the art of interaction with the people, and the people were opposed to that change. And we listened to them; we'd restored some economic stability and so we've made a change."

There will be no surprise if the Government ends the two-child benefit cap - a policy loathed by many Labour MPs - even though such a move will trigger a full-throttle assault from Tory leader Kemi Badenoch. She argues it is "simply wrong to raise taxes on working couples who delay or limit having children, just to subsidise larger families who can rely on the taxpayer".

The Work and Pensions Secretary does nothing to play down expectations an announcement is coming.

"I'm a believer that if you've got something to say, you do it at the right time and you say how you'll do it," he says.

Though softly spoken, there is real enthusiasm in his voice as he describes how he hopes people will gain the "purpose and pride" which comes with a job. He lacks neither as he embraces the challenge of boosting the productivity of post-pandemic Britain.

His message is as simple as it is clear: "I believe that work is good for you."