Lord Drayson, the government minister in charge of science, believes he has an uncanny ability “like a sixth sense” to know and predict some events instinctively.

The multi-millionaire businessman and Labour donor says he believes humans have strange abilities that are not widely understood. “In my life there have been some things I have known, and I don’t know why,” he said in an interview with The Sunday Times. “I think there is a lot we don’t understand about human capability.”

Drayson, who returned to government last month to become the first science minister with a seat in cabinet, also said he believed in God and saw no conflict between faith and science. “I think faith is a very strange thing,” he said. “You don’t necessarily believe in something just because you have the evidence to prove it.”

The scientific view is that theories and beliefs should be based on evidence and proven by experiment.

Drayson, who is not claiming paranormal powers for himself, cites Blink, the bestselling American book about human instinct, by Malcolm Gladwell. The book identifies cases of individuals with the apparent power to foretell events, an ability Drayson believes he may share.

He said: “It’s a really fascinating book. He gives lots of examples of people who have demonstrated very clearly that they have good instinct in their lives. One particular fireman in America had this amazing instinct . . . This guy [knew] when something bad was going to happen, when you need to leave the building.

“Gladwell’s book is about the ability of the human being to know something, but not to know why they know it. This struck a chord with me, because in my life there have been some things that I’ve known and I don’t know why.”

Drayson described the ability as “like a sixth sense” and said it could be linked to the way humans have evolved.

Critics once accused him of almost supernatural timing when he made a donation to Labour: the pharmaceutical company he ran at the time subsequently won a £32m government contract with seemingly uncanny ease. An inquiry found no impropriety.

And though the government might be grateful for any help in these difficult times from any quarter, Drayson and Gladwell are not talking about “extra-sensory perception”.

Instead Gladwell’s book is about “the power of thinking without thinking”, and argues that gut feelings can be as accurate as considered judgments. The author argues that very brief encounters can give a person’s “adaptive unconscious” enough information to make a sound judgment.

Drayson said: “Gladwell talks about this guy who knew when someone was going to double fault, playing tennis, and you try to figure out, how does he know?”

Dr Matthew Smith, associate professor of psychology at Liverpool Hope University, said: “It might feel like a sixth sense but it could be based on evidence gathered from our surroundings feeding into a snap judgment.”

Additional reporting: Chris Gourlay

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