Chris Bryant

Chris Bryant

Labour — Rhondda and Ogmore

Speaking in the House of Commons on 27 January 2025

Debate

Creative Industries

Contribution

They should get in touch with the Telecoms Minister, but unfortunately he is rubbish. That is me. I am very happy to talk about the broadband issues in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency at any point, and if he wants a meeting with Building Digital UK, we can go through the specifics area by area. I have offered that to as many Members as I can. Getting back to the creative industries, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) was channelling his inner Frank Sinatra; he basically said, “If we can make it here, we’ll make it anywhere.” He made a very good point: we need to make sure that creativity is perceived not as something that we see only in the big cities of this country, but as something that we need to exercise in every single part of the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Nesil Caliskan) made a very similar point about her constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) made precisely that point—that creativity is not just about cities, but towns—as did my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Joe Morris). The hon. Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin) said, “If only we could recruit from not just one demographic.” I feel that so strongly. Perhaps the most famous actor from my constituency was Sir Stanley Baker from Ferndale, famous for “Zulu”, a film that every Welsh person has to watch about 52 times a year. Bringing people into the creative industries from every demographic is a really important part of what we need to do.

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