Scientists are well known for arguing, and when you combine that love with politics and you either get some very clever, or some very petty scheming. In the case of the current dispute surrounding the Science and Technology Select Committee, it is certainly the latter.
The Science and Technology Select Committee is the last committee to finalise its membership, and this is entirely down to the intransigence of some Labour backbenchers of scientific bent who cannot stand the fact that it is going to be chaired by Liberal Democrat Phil Willis.
Dr Ian Gibson, Dr Brian Iddon and Dr Des Turner are all miffed that Labour has given up control the S&T Committee to the Lib Dems, despite the fact that the committee is one of the least important going, and exactly the kind that had to be sacrificed to hold on to important ones like Foreign Affairs. They have been told by the Whips that they can all have a place on the committee if they promise to support the nomination of Phil Willis as Chair. Apparently, they wrote back saying that they will not block his nomination, which in the world of petty politics is by no means the same thing.
So a pointless standoff has developed right at the sidelines of Select Committee politics - one that certainly doesn’t do the cause of science, or the standing of the good doctors, any good whatsoever.
recessmonkey@gmail.com
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But Phil Willis has no background in either science or technology - his subjects are history and music!
Womble said this on July 31st, 2005 at 11:25 pm
Perhaps the Lib Dems shld put forward Lembit Opik instead, given his interest in asteroids?
Little Red Snapper said this on August 1st, 2005 at 3:20 pm
RM is half right in his analysis - S&T was a necessary trade off in order to ensure control of more important committees like Foreign Affairs, and sufficiently minor to be able to sacrifice (unlike Education for instance, which Phil Willis would have loved to have chaired). The fact that S&T’s chair was the independent (and respected) Ian Gibson made it all the more easy for Lab whips to sell him out - he has rebelled more than once.
On the LD side clearly Willis was promised a SC chairmanship as inducement to giving up his frontbench portfolio; Labour having reclaimed the formerly LD controlled Work and Pensions cttee, they were obliged to surrender another one.
Collectively Iddon, Gibson, and Turner have considerable credibility as independent minded and scientifically knowledgeable academics; all are less than enamoured of the Lab whips and Blair.
So: is the spat a result of Willis’s lack of scientific and technological awareness (his daughter is AOL’s Connie, incidentally) or have the doctors got a case of the sulks with their own side after Gibson was dumped?
Labour Watch said this on August 3rd, 2005 at 1:19 pm
My source indicated that it was as much about the fact that Labour had surrended the committee to the Lib Dems at all, and that the selection of Phil Willis simply added insult to injuury.
Academic credibility is nothing in the face of whips who are pissed off with you. Considering the battles the Labour whips have fought and lost recently (e.g. the Parliamentary Committee membership, Dunwoody as Chair of Transport) I doubt they were in the mood to take any shit from rebellious backbenchers.
The Committee membership has now been officially approved - the good doctors were forced to back down as they really didn’t have a leg to stand on.
Run Seven said this on August 3rd, 2005 at 2:21 pm