Ian Gibson underwent a dramatic political conversion during his early days as a scientist. Seen among his closest friends as having right-wing views, the man who was to become a hard-left Labour MP and thorn in the side of the Blair government did a volte-face when working at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich in the 1960s. The body responsible for university funding had given a generous pay award to academics but dealt far less kindly with their technical and other staff. Gibson’s technical support workers had little trouble in persuading him to campaign on their behalf. According to friends the episode transformed him. “It was astonishing. He almost became a different person,” said one.
Gibson, who was to become one of the country’s leading cancer experts, signed up for a few years with the Socialist Workers Party but as his academic career went from one success to another he also started thinking about becoming an MP. He joined the Labour Party in the early 1980s and became MP for the marginal Norwich North constituency in 1997, holding on to the seat until he resigned in 2009 after an expenses controversy.
Gibson was a scientist first, politician second. He was also a good footballer, appearing on St Mirren and Airdrie’s books in his university days and playing for Wymondham Town in Norfolk, the UEA staff team and later coaching the MPs’ football squad.
He enjoyed a close friendship with Michael Balls, the eminent zoologist and father of Ed, the Labour politician. After Edinburgh University, where he studied genetics and gained a doctorate, Gibson continued his studies at Indiana University and the University of Washington. Balls, who was then at the University of California, Berkeley, met Gibson at a conference. Gibson, who had recently taken up his first post at the UEA, told Balls there might a position for an embryologist there. Balls soon took a job in the school of biological sciences and got the lectureship he wanted with Gibson’s help.
Gibson worked as a research scientist at the UEA until 1971 then became a senior biology lecturer. He was appointed dean of the School of Biological Sciences in 1991 and was the head of a research team investigating cancer. His expertise was in the biology of cancer and the development of drugs targeting specific genes for chronic myeloid leukaemia. At Gibson’s suggestion Bryan Gunn, the Norwich City goalkeeper who had lost a daughter to leukaemia, used money he had raised from a campaign to fund the Francesca Gunn laboratory, which Gibson then ran for five years.
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He entered parliament with a hefty 9,470 majority in the Blair landslide win of 1997. Despite his left-wing tendencies, he won the support of many voters who were not naturally drawn to the party. A close associate said of Gibson: “He had the common touch. And he had a wicked sense of humour.”
Ian Gibson was born in Dumfries and educated at the academy there. His first wife was Verity, a social worker. He is survived by their daughter, Dominique. Another daughter, Ruth, died of a genetic illness in 1993. He later married Elizabeth Frances Lubbock, a nurse, in 1974, and they had a daughter, Helen. Both survive him.
He set about using his political platform to push the case for science and better cancer treatment. Although well liked on all sides, he was a regular worry for the whips. Unsurprisingly he became a member of the science and technology committee and was elected chairman, despite opposition from the Labour whips, between 2001 and 2005. He was also chairman of the all-party group on cancer.
Gibson was regularly at odds with the Blair government. His opposition to student top-up fees brought him into conflict with the education secretary, his fellow Norwich MP Charles Clarke. After Clarke moved to the Home Office Gibson voted against parts of his counterterrorism legislation.
Gibson surprised many in 2006 when, at the age of 68, he said he wanted to stand again in 2010. He declared he would rather “die with my boots on and go missing in action than crawl into early retirement and wear slippers and pantaloons”. It was not to be. Gibson was known to have high ethical standards and there was shock when he became embroiled in the expenses scandal that erupted in 2009.
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It emerged that he had allowed his daughter Helen and her partner to live at the taxpayer-supported home in London where he stayed when on parliamentary business and that he had sold the flat to her at below market price. At the time political parties were cracking down on MPs named as having erred and a special “star chamber” barred Gibson from standing in 2010, much to the dismay of his local party, which said he had been the victim of a kangaroo court. In front of the committee Gibson said that if he had sold the flat and given the proceeds to his daughter it would have amounted to just the same as what he had done. Gibson immediately resigned his seat, prompting a by-election which Labour lost on a 17-point swing to the Tories.
Gibson remained a popular figure in Norwich, campaigning on many local issues, and returned to lecturing, including at Harvard. He was delighted when his old friend Jeremy Corbyn won the Labour leadership, but he urged Corbyn, probably with tongue in cheek, to be tougher on his opponents within the party.
Ian Gibson, scientist and Labour MP, was born on September 26, 1938. He died of pancreatic cancer on April 9, 2021, aged 82