'I have this extraordinary opportunity'

The green-fingered minister grows his own tomatoes, courgettes and French beans.

"I do a couple of hours of gardening a week," he says. "And I don't just give directions – I get my hands very dirty." It's not unheard-of for Wicks to bring in lettuces and other home-grown offerings for his staff.

Hands behind his head, legs casually crossed, the 55-year-old minister's relaxed disposition belies his background as a lecturer and social policy academic. In fact, the only hint of his teaching past is his tendency now and again to place a rhetorical "yes?" at the end of a sentence, as if to check his explanation has been understood.

Wicks' tone, however, turns serious as soon as the conversation turns to the subject of housing benefit, a system long criticised for its excessive use of red tape. Local authorities and the contractors they hire to process claims are often unable to cope with housing benefit's complex demands, leaving vulnerable tenants waiting for payment and accumulating rent arrears. It has also been undermined by corruption. In 1999 alone, there were 85 regulation changes, mostly to do with fraud detection.

"I think the system is poor," admits Wicks. "It's getting better but it needs to be one of the best." The problem, says the minister, is that councils – and in some cases Whitehall – have turned a blind eye to the complicated issue until it was too late. "Housing benefit has been in the cupboard for too long and needs to be dragged into the light and be improved. In the past, it has not been given the profile it deserves.

"I have met directors of finance, leaders of councils and MPs who, until there is a crisis, take no interest in housing benefit. It should not take government inspectors issuing directions to encourage local authorities to do well on housing benefit."

As for the mind-boggling number of fraud detection measures – collectively known as the verification framework – Wicks thinks them necessary. "We are saying that before we hand out taxpayers' money and before someone puts their hand in the community chest, they are who they say they are."

Proof that the government is trying to reform the benefits system, says Wicks, is that elderly claimants whose circumstances don't change no longer have to reapply for housing benefit every year. However, Wicks is reluctant to make sweeping promises of major reforms. "I can say that in a year to 18 months' time it will be more streamlined" is the only comment he will make on the issue. Experts agree, though, that major reform is unlikely to take place before 2006 (HT 4 July, page 7).

One controversial proposal that Wicks is keen to comment on is colleague Frank Field's plan to withhold benefit from antisocial tenants. Wicks says: "When constituents come and see me to complain about neighbours from hell, if I say 'well, do you know you are paying their rent through housing benefit' then they'll think I'm daft."

Wicks, however, is keen that any cuts in benefit do not penalise innocent people.

"We have to protect innocent people within families. Any sanctions have to be proportionate. This is not about evicting the tenant, it is about proper sanctions."

So, given that housing benefit is a notoriously complicated subject and one that often baffles even the most erudite of social policy experts, does Wicks claim truly to understand the biggest policy area in his brief? "Do I understand housing benefit? Well, I suppose if I was sitting an exam I would get a 2:1 rather than a first," he smiles. "But I think I would pass."

Wicks, who describes himself as a "democratic socialist, politically and ethically", says that his role as a minister allows him to put some of the theory he used as a lecturer and researcher into practice. "What I enjoy is that having spent a number of years teaching and researching this subject, I have this extraordinary opportunity to do something about it. It's about getting out there in the constituency and meeting the people – they come to you with real problems and remind you what things are about."

It might sound like a cliche to say Wicks went into parliament to try and make the world a better place, but it his case it is true. "As a socialist," he says, "my starting point is that what we are about is to enable each individual in this country to have the very best opportunity. But too many of our children do not have that opportunity and too many of our elderly are living in discomfort and poverty when they should be comfortable.

"We still live in a very unjust, unequal society. And it shouldn't be like that. Some junior ministers say there's nothing so junior as being a junior minister, but that's not my experience. It's exciting, quite hard work, and I'm having the time of my life."