David Cairns

David Cairns, who has died aged 44 of acute pancreatitis, had an unconventional career as a Roman Catholic priest and Labour MP. The two, at first, risked being mutually exclusive; having been selected as the prospective Labour candidate for his home town of Greenock, he discovered he was barred from becoming an MP because two acts prevented former priests standing for Parliament.

Siobhain McDonagh, for whom Mr Cairns worked as a parliamentary researcher, responded by introducing the House of Commons Disqualification (Amendment) Bill in June 1999, but the bill fell. The Government subsequently introduced the House of Commons (Removal of Clergy Disqualification) Bill to remove these restrictions, prompting Anne Widdicombe (a Catholic convert) to argue that holy orders ought not to be superseded by political considerations.

On the other side of the debate, however, were articulate voices such as the future Speaker John Bercow and Mike O’Brien, and outside Parliament from the constitutional lawyer Professor Robert Blackburn and Margaret McDonagh, the general secretary of the Labour Party. Finally, in May 2001, the bill passed, just before Parliament was dissolved in preparation for the General Election in which Mr Cairns was to be a candidate.

John David Cairns was born in Greenock and educated at Notre Dame High School before training for the Roman Catholic priesthood at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. Later, he continued his studies at the Franciscan International Centre in Canterbury. He then served as a priest, including three years at a parish in Clapham, where he witnessed extreme poverty alongside extreme wealth.

In 1994 he was appointed a director of the Christian Socialist Movement, an organisation which liked to see itself as the “prophetic conscience” of the Labour Party. Three years later, he became research assistant to Ms McDonagh, then a newly elected Labour MP, and in 1998 an elected politician himself as a Labour councillor in the London borough of Merton. He served as a councillor for four years.

The law debarring former priests having been repealed, Mr Cairns was comfortably elected to represent Greenock and Inverclyde at the 2001 General Election, succeeding Norman Godman. Not only did he have a majority of nearly 10,000, but he had the surprising distinction of being the first person born in Greenock to actually represent the town in the Commons.

Another of his predecessors, J Dickson Mabon, had once presented Mr Cairns with a prize at his school. A week later Mr Mabon defected to the SDP, an event Mr Cairns joked “may not be linked”.

Although a Blairite and an adherent to New Labour, Mr Cairns always managed to couch his arguments, like his friend John Reid, in the context of Old Labour (he later citied his Communist grandfathers and the destruction of Greenock’s shipyards as major influences on his political development). Like Tony Blair, he accepted the need for public sector reform without concern for ideological purity. Publicly loyal to Labour, privately he was non-tribal.

Although not ostentatiously careerist, Mr Cairns was appointed PPS to Malcolm Wicks, the pensions minister, in 2003, and following the 2005 General Election (in which his seat became the new and enlarged Inverclyde constituency), he became a minister himself as an under-secretary at the Scotland Office. Soon he was splitting his time between Dover House and the Northern Ireland Office and, following an SNP victory at Holyrood in 2007, was promoted to Minister of State. Given that Des Browne was also Defence Secretary, Mr Cairns carried much of the Scottish Secretary’s workload.

Ministerial office played to his strengths as an administrator, tactician and his relaxed style with colleagues and those from all walks of life beyond government. Politically, he had a rare talent for taking on the SNP in an intelligent way while defending the United Kingdom in the Scottish media, once referring to calls for more powers as a product of the “McChattering Classes”. Inevitably better known north rather than south of the Border, he nevertheless enjoyed a good reputation in the Parliamentary Labour Party.

In September 2008 he was caught up in the storm surrounding Gordon Brown’s premiership and resigned following media speculation that he supported a leadership contest. His departure followed that of Siobhan McDonagh, his friend and former boss, who had been sacked as a whip for backing a change of leadership. Mr Cairns agreed that the time had come to “allow a leadership debate to run its course” and that as he wanted to play a part in that debate, to do so and remain in government would have been “hypocrisy of the highest order”.

Returning to the backbenches, he pursued issues of personal and long-standing interest like broadcasting and the arts. He was twice chairman of Labour Friends of Israel, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on HIV & Aids and a member of the culture select committee. He also worked hard to regenerate a constituency that had suffered from decades of high unemployment and deprivation, attracting media attention when he criticised the depiction of Greenock in Ken Loach’s film, Sweet Sixteen. At last year’s General Election he was returned to Parliament with an increased majority of 14,416.

A man of, to quote the outgoing Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray, “enormous dignity, courage and outstanding intellect”, Mr Cairns was considered by many to be the brightest MP of his generation. Widely travelled with a broad hinterland consisting of football, history and an engaging combination of high and low culture (he was a David Bowie enthusiast and an avid follower of the X-Factor), his analysis of political events was always original and perceptive.

He was taken ill in March and died at London’s Royal Free on Monday evening. He is survived by his partner Dermot, his father John and brother Billy.