Harris first entered government when he was made a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Transport in September 2006 by PM Tony Blair.

When Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister in June 2007, Harris kept his junior ministerial role but, in the October 2008 reshuffle, he was sacked and returned to the backbenches.

[2] Harris was a candidate in the 2011 Scottish Labour leadership election,[3] but effectively admitted defeat on 10 December a week before the result was declared.

[4] In 2012, he returned to Ed Miliband's frontbench as shadow environment minister but left in June 2013 to spend more time with his family, being succeeded by Barry Gardiner.

[7] He worked as a trainee newspaper journalist with the East Kilbride News in 1986 before joining the Paisley Daily Express in 1988.

He was appointed as a press officer with the Scottish Labour Party in 1990, moving to the same position with Strathclyde Regional Council in 1992.

He served on the Science and Technology Select Committee for two years from 2001, and was appointed in 2003 as the Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Minister of State for Northern Ireland, John Spellar.

[10] Also in 2005, he was involved in an argument over the funding of a housing charity which had called for direct action following the eviction and deportation to Albania of a Kosovan family seeking asylum from a flat in Drumchapel.

[14] Harris was forced to stand down from his role as Scottish Labour's internet adviser on 16 January 2012, following adverse media reaction to his posting of a Downfall parody on YouTube ridiculing First Minister Alex Salmond.

[15] In August 2011 Harris expressed an interest, and in September 2011 confirmed on Twitter he was standing in the election to be the next leader of the Scottish Labour Party, after the publication of the Murphy and Boyack review.

[32] Harris further admitted on the edition of 29 July 2020 of the Iain Dale All Talk podcast that this was not the first time he had voted Conservative, having done so two years earlier as well.

In October 2018, Harris was appointed to the Expert Challenge Panel, supporting Keith Williams in his wide-ranging review of the British railway industry.

[41] In 2019, he launched a Doctor Who podcast, The Power of 3, alongside fellow fans Kenny Smith and David Steel.