Chris Bryant

It is a particular joy to see you in the Chair, Dame Caroline, as with one of your many other hats on you have a passionate interest in the creative industries. It is great to have you here. I will start by commending my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) on being elected again, which is a great delight—this is a slightly different debate from the one we might have had if it had been led by his predecessor. It is good to see him return to the House. He says he hopes that I enjoyed his tour; the danger is that I enjoyed the tour so much that I might not need to make the actual tour. I will answer the specific questions first and then make some other comments. First, on whether I will visit, I am very happy to; it is just a question of when we can make that work. I am in two Departments, so it would be good if we could try to combine some of the work on tech with some of the work on creative industries, which would follow on from what the council has done locally. I think of tech as a creative industry, but the council has led the way in trying to combine the two. Secondly, on whether we will look at creating a creative cluster, my hon. Friend makes a very good case. We are looking at what we need to do about creative clusters in the next round of announcements next year, so he has made a good bid and my officials are listening very attentively.