Conor Burns says he would not be a politician if he had stayed in Belfast

Conor Burns has been an MP since 2010 and last year was appointed as minister in the Northern Ireland Office

A Belfast-born government minister has said he does not believe he would have entered elected politics if he had stayed in Northern Ireland.

Conor Burns' family moved to England when he was eight, during the Troubles.

He told BBC News NI's Red Lines podcast that politics in Northern Ireland was still overly "defined by constitutional identity".

"I'm a Catholic, I support the union... I'm openly gay - tell me where my political home is in NI?"

Mr Burns has been an MP since 2010, and last year was appointed as minister in the Northern Ireland Office.

He was born into a nationalist family in north Belfast in 1972, but they relocated to Hertfordshire in 1980, while the conflict known as the Troubles continued in Northern Ireland.

'Army aren't around'

Asked by host Mark Carruthers if he felt his political outlook would have been different had he remained in Belfast, Mr Burns said: "I think if we'd stayed in Northern Ireland, I wouldn't have gone near politics for a month of Sundays.

"Where do I fit in the Northern Ireland political scene, even today?" he told the podcast.

"I'm a Catholic, I support the union, I'm a Thatcherite, I'm openly gay - tell me where my political home is in the political infrastructure of Northern Ireland?

"That is one of the sadnesses - politics here are more defined by constitutional identity, or sectarian identity than they are in other parts of the UK, which is around economic interest, world view and philosophical outlook."

The minister added that some members of his family "would have been sympathetic to the IRA, in a way".

"Many of them would have been sympathetic to a united Ireland, but others took the view the whole thing was insane, and no jurisdiction was worth the violence," he said.

Mr Burns also reflected on his time growing up, and said when he moved to England, he told his mother he initially did not feel safe.

"She asked me why and I said: 'Because the police don't have guns and the Army aren't around.'

"And that was the normality I had grown up with in Northern Ireland.

"I found unarmed police officers and no Army confusing as a child."

You can listen to the Red Lines podcasts on BBC Sounds.