Pat McFadden has been Labour MP for Wolverhampton South East since 2005 and currently serves as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, a full Cabinet position, since 5 September 2025. He previously served as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations from July 2024 to September 2025. He replaced Liz Kendall at DWP in the reshuffle triggered by Angela Rayner's resignation. He is one of the most senior members of the Cabinet.

Born March 1965 in Paisley and raised in Glasgow, the youngest of seven in a working class Irish immigrant family, Holyrood Secondary then politics at Edinburgh. His route to Westminster ran through three Labour leaders: researcher to Donald Dewar, speechwriter to John Smith, then adviser and Political Secretary to Tony Blair from 2002 to 2005, the most senior non ministerial post in Number 10. That Glasgow background and the apprenticeship in the machinery of power are the foundation of his politics.

Under Gordon Brown he served as Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office (2006-2007), Minister of State for Employment Relations (2007-2009), and Minister of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (2009-2010). He served on Labour's National Executive Committee from 2007 to 2010.

He was sacked from the shadow front bench by Jeremy Corbyn in January 2016 for making comments on the Paris terror attacks that were interpreted as critical of the party's position on military action. He returned to the front bench under Starmer: Shadow Economic Secretary (2020-2021), Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury (2021-2023), Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and National Campaign Coordinator (2023-2024).

As National Campaign Coordinator, with Ellie Reeves as his deputy, McFadden imposed the discipline, caution and message control that delivered Labour's 2024 landslide. That makes him one of the principal architects of the victory.

He sponsored a bill making persons of the Roman Catholic faith eligible to serve as His Majesty's High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. It received Royal Assent on 3 April 2025. It is a narrow constitutional reform but it is an enacted law, not an unfulfilled aspiration.

He has voted in 208 divisions with zero rebellions.

McFadden's strengths include 20 years of parliamentary experience, service to three Labour leaders (Dewar, Smith, Blair) before entering Parliament, Political Secretary to the Prime Minister, the 2024 campaign architecture, two senior Cabinet positions (CDL and DWP), NEC membership, an enacted law, and a 27.5 percent majority providing complete electoral security. His weaknesses include a public profile that does not match his Cabinet rank, the DWP welfare reform agenda that will test whether his reputation for grip survives contact with hardship and disability politics, the sacking by Corbyn leaving a factional scar, and the persistent impression that he is a machine politician rather than a public figure. At 61, he is at the peak of his governmental career. The DWP brief is the largest test he has faced. Whether welfare reform produces policy that is both fiscally sustainable and humane will determine whether his career ends as one of Labour's most effective operators or one of its most consequential ministers. The two outcomes are not the same.