Ian Pearson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ian Pearson MP

Member of Parliament for Dudley South Dudley West (1994-1997)
Incumbent
Assumed office 15 December 1994
Preceded by	John Blackburn

Born	5 April 1959 (1959-04-05) (age 49) West Midlands
Nationality	British
Political party	Labour

Ian Phares Pearson (born 5 April 1959, West Midlands) is a politician in the United Kingdom. He is Labour member of Parliament for Dudley South and Minister of State in the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. He has specific responsibility for Science and Innovation.

Pearson was educated at Balliol College, Oxford (BA Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) and the University of Warwick (MA, PhD).

He entered parliament for Dudley West (now Dudley South) in a by-election in 1994, which he served until boundary changes moved him to his present constituency in 1997.

Pearson served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Paymaster-General Geoffrey Robinson from 1997 until Robinson was forced to resign in 1998. In 2001 he returned to the government as a whip. In 2002 he moved to the Northern Ireland Office as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State. After the 2005 general election he was promoted to Minister of State for Trade in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

In the PM's 2006 reshuffle, he was appointed as Minister of State for Climate Change and Environment at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Pearson has also been noted for some contreversial comments.

In 1998 he slammed the World Cup Song 3 Lions 98 by David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and the lightning Seeds by saying they 'should be kept as far away as possible from a recording studio"

On January 5, 2007, Pearson courted considerable controversy by publicly criticising several airlines, particularly Ryanair, for failing to pull their weight in lowering UK carbon emissions. He described Ryanair as "the irresponsible face of capitalism". In response, Michael O'Leary, the CEO of Ryanair, claimed Ryanair had made a considerable investment in environmentally-friendly planes and technologies and had the lowest fuel use per passenger figures of any British airline. O'Leary described Pearson as an "idiot minister", adding that Pearson didn't know what he was talking about.^[1]

On 29 June 2007 he was moved in Gordon Brown's first reshuffle to become a Minister of State in the newly created Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills under Secretary of State John Denham. He has been criticised for not doing anything to avert the current funding crisis at the STFC hitting UK Astronomy and particle physics.