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Nanotechnologies offer potentially huge benefits to society, industry, the environment and health. They can help us improve our quality of life and respond to some of the big issues that we face in the 21st century such as climate change, world poverty and disease. They can help us have better lives, as we live longer.

As the BBC documentary series

illustrated, nanotechnologies can bring to mind fantastical concepts — unsmashable cars, uncollapsible buildings, ultra-light jet planes. Those notions may or may not come to pass but for now you are more likely to find the technologies in the form of, for example, antimicrobial dressings for wounds, graffiti-resistant paint on walls or fire-resistant coatings on clothing.

The UK nanotechnologies industry contributes £23bn to the economy. Yet more than 60 per cent of people in the UK have never even heard of it.

That is something I want to change. Some of the issues where nanotechnologies could potentially have a massive impact are among the largest political questions that we face. And we will need to be able to answer them together, as a democratic society.