Hello, in this programme I'm talking face to face with a politician whose name is synonymous with left-leaning politics,

but who's managed, despite that, to carve out a style and a reputation that's unique to himself.

He's one of the most experienced members of Sir Keir Starmour's Cabinet, yet he serves in one of its least prominent roles, though.

That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of

challenges involved in the job. He is, of course, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

Hilary Benn, welcome to Red Lines. Well, thank you very much for inviting me, Mark.

You did, as everyone surely knows, grow up in a political household. Your father, Tony Benn,

was an MP for almost 50 years. Was it written

in the stars that you would follow him into elected politics? When I was 10, I wanted to be

a firefighter because my grandfather took me to a display just across the River Thames. But after

that war off, yeah, being an elected representative was what I wanted to do.

I served in local government for many years before being elected to Parliament.

But I grew up in a household where my mum and my dad, mum a great influence as well as dad,

encouraged us as children, my two brothers, my sister and myself, to take an interest in and talk about what was happening in the world.

And when you're little, you assume that all families are like your own because it's the only one you know.

And then as I got older, I begun to understand what he did, why people took an interest in what he did.

I do this job because it's about serving the public.

He'd been an MP for, I think, three years when you were born in 1953.

So you didn't really know anything else. No, I didn't. I didn't. And he would, I remember

the first memory I have of the House of Commons, he took my brother and I in and we sat in the

gallery. And I looked down at the government benches and just below the gallery was a man in a black coat striped trousers

and I remember that his legs were swinging above the ground they didn't quite reach the ground

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