Ian Gibson, former radical who became a Labour MP after a distinguished academic career investigating cancer – obituary

Ian Gibson, who has died aged 82, was a geneticist who gave up the leadership of a cancer research team at the University of East Anglia (UEA) at the age of 58 when elected Labour MP for Norwich North.

A Scot who began his political life on the extreme Left, Gibson from 1997 to 2009 was a listened-to scientific voice in the Commons, chairing the Science and Technology Select Committee and the all-party group on cancer.

Tall, balding and egg-headed, he was rated one of the most gifted new entrants as Tony Blair swept to power. His opposition to the Iraq war and student top-up fees excepted, he was generally supportive of the Blair/Brown government.

He was Norwich branch chairman of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and in 2004 suffered a minor stroke visiting Ramallah, on the West Bank. He also chaired the all-party group on Cuba.

Gibson’s Commons career was cut short by the MPs’ expenses scandal exposed by The Daily Telegraph. When it emerged that he had claimed for a flat in which his daughter lived rent-free, then sold it to her for half its market value, a party disciplinary panel – branded a “kangaroo court” by his constituency chauirman – barred him from standing again.

Other MPs on both sides of the House subjected to such sanctions quietly served out their term. But Gibson considered his position “untenable”, and in June 2009 resigned his seat. At the ensuing by-election, the future Conservative minister Chloe Smith captured Norwich North with a majority of 7,348.

Though at 70 Gibson could not have expected to become a minister, the episode was an unfortunate end to a productive time in Parliament. He went back to academia, and over the next decade was active in and around his specialist field.

Prior to his election, Gibson had spent 32 years at UEA; arriving as a researcher, he became professor and dean at the university’s School of Biological Sciences, whose laboratories employed 1,700 people. His own team was investigating cancer, and Macmillan Cancer Relief in 2003 named him a “champion” for his work in support of cancer patients.

Gibson was a keen amateur footballer, captaining Wymondham Town FC in the 1960s and , chairing the club half a century later. He was founder/coach of Red Rose FC, funded by local trade unions, and from 1999 to 2005 joint manager of the parliamentary team. He also chaired Norwich City’s power wheelchair football team.

Ian Gibson was born at Dumfries on September 26 1938, the son of William Gibson, a clerk, and the former Winifred Kerr. From Dumfries Academy he took a BSc and a doctorate in Genetics at Edinburgh University, then trained to teach at Moray House College. He completed his studies at the universities of Indiana and Washington.

He joined UEA in 1965, two years after its foundation, and was appointed a lecturer in 1968, senior lecturer in 1971, and dean in 1991. He was a governor of the world-class John Innes biotechnology centre, and sat on the grants committees of the Medical Research Council and the Cancer Research Campaign. The university made him an honorary professor in 2003, and awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2011.

Gibson served on the executive of what became the Manufacturing, Science and Finance trade union for 20 years from 1972. He was MSF’s honorary treasurer until given a three-year suspension for attacking its leadership.

Politically he began in the 1970s with International Socialism, moving to the Socialist Workers’ Party before joining Labour in 1983.

He organised factory sit-ins in Norwich, twice attended the general assembly of the Soviet-front World Federation of Scientific workers, headed the Norwich Anti-Nuclear Campaign against the Sizewell B power station, and was active in Scientists Against Nuclear Armaments.

He was still claiming in 1988 that capitalism had to be superseded, but by the time he was selected to fight Norwich North in 1990 had accepted the need for the nuclear deterrent and was describing himself as a radical rather than a Marxist. Neil Kinnock hailed him as an “excellent candidate”.

At the 1992 election, Gibson failed to oust the sitting Conservative MP Patrick Thompson by 266 votes. Five years on, Thompson retired and Gibson beat a new Tory candidate by 9,470 votes, giving up his academic posts.

He impressed at Wesminster, urging more research into organophosphates and insisting Gulf War Syndrome was real. Gibson warned that Britain needed an enlightened approach to biotechnology, “the most important science for the next millennium”, or US dominance in the field would increase.

He accused the Government of launching a cancer scare about eating red meat without adequate scientific backing, but declared himself “ecstatic” about Gordon Brown’s increased funding for research.

In December 1997, Gibson was one of 14 Labour MPs to vote against Harriet Harman’s cuts in single parent benefits. Activists contrasted him with Norwich’s other Labour MP Charles Clarke, who voted for the cuts having written Ms Harman a private letter opposing them.

After a year, with Politico’s rating him second among the entire new Labour intake, he was invited to chair the independent Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology.

Gibson was already on the Science & Technology Select Committee, but after being re-elected in 2001 he became its chairman despite opposition from the whips. In 2004 the Royal Society of Chemistry gave him its Parliamentary Award, and the House Magazine named him Backbencher of the Year.

Holding his seat again in 2005 by 5,459 votes, Gibson joined the Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills.

In August 2006 he touched a sensitive nerve for any Norfolk constituency by suggesting inbreeding may have played a part in its rising number of diabetes cases. He said he had not meant to cause offence.

The same year, he took part in a BBC television documentary highlighting the high incidence of oesophageal cancer in Norfolk and suggesting a link with secret experiments carried out by the MoD in the 1960s, when quantities of poisonous zinc cadmium sulphide had been sprayed into the air.

After his resignation, Gibson was a visiting professor at MIT, and lectured at UAE, Imperial College, University College London and the universities of Cambridge, Hull, Durham, Salford and Nottingham. From 2009 to 2013 he was a columnist for the Norwich Evening News.

Gibson during or after his time in Parliament chaired the Nanotechnology Task Force and the UK Brain Tumour Consortium. He was a director of the Stem Cell Foundation, the European Cervical Cancer Association and Community Telemedicine; an honorary Fellow of the British Scientific Association and the Wellcome Trust; and a trustee of Children with Leukaemia.

He was president of the Norfolk Carers’ Forum and Norwich branch of the United Nations Association; chaired the Norfolk Association of Local Councils; and was a trustee of the UEA Students’ Union.

His books included Anti-sense Technology (1997); Too Little Too Late?: Government Investment in Nanotechnology (2004); Best when we are Labour? (with Des Turner, 2011); and Science, Politics … and ME (with Elaine Sherriffs, 2017).

Ian Gibson married Elizabeth Lubbock in 1974. They had two daughters.

Ian Gibson, born September 26 1938, died April 9 2021