The Grauniads Ian Sample ran a series of interviews with the (prospective) ministers for science of the three leading political parties in the UK. The angle was issues that can blow up in your face and as expected, nanotechnology featured.
Lord Sainsbury pointed straight to The Royal Society/Royal Academy of Engineering study, and the need for a dialogue between scientists and the public. This is something youll be hard pushed to find anything other than complete consensus on. However, how this dialogue is to be conducted, for what purpose, and what role the public are expected to play in the democratic development of a new technology, is somewhat more elusive.
The Conservatives and Liberals both strongly condemned the grey goo scare stories, with Robert Key (Conservative) being the only one of the three to point out (in a rather unbritish manner we might add) that nanotech is not something to be frightened of, it’s something to understand and be positive about. Quite right.