Chris Bryant: ...Government that it does not work without guaranteeing a creative education for every child in all our schools; it does not work if kids in the Rhondda do not get an equal opportunity to think of a job in the creative industries, along with anybody else in this country; and it simply does not work if Ministers constantly deride creative industry and humanities degrees—we cannot have one...
Chris Bryant: ...Government that it does not work without guaranteeing a creative education for every child in all our schools; it does not work if kids in the Rhondda do not get an equal opportunity to think of a job in the creative industries, along with anybody else in this country; and it simply does not work if Ministers constantly deride creative industry and humanities degrees—we cannot have one...
Chris Bryant: ...am sorry, but the Government’s answer to the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee was a load of hot air that could have been written by ChatGPT, except ChatGPT would have done a better job of it. The truth of the matter is that the Government’s flagship on AI as it relates to creative industries, which is meant to be protecting the moral and economic rights of artists,...
Chris Bryant: ...him this morning; I believe he was at the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. He made an important point about livestock: most farmers must have some kind of digital connectivity simply to do their job. They cannot pretend to be Gabriel Oak and Bathsheba Everdene from “Far from the Madding Crowd”; to make a living in agriculture, one must have a modern farm. The hon. Member for North...
Chris Bryant: ...1987. I sometimes think that the people who do such Bills on behalf of all of us deserve a medal. I am sure the whole House sends its best regards and deepest condolences to his family. Our core job as Members of Parliament is the scrutiny of legislation, teasing out whether a proposal will do what it says, whether it is necessary and proportionate, and whether it has public support. The...
Chris Bryant: ...the issues he raised. Today, mobile phone connection can be the difference between life and death. For many poorer families, it is their only means of telecommunication. It is how they apply for a job or register for a bank account. It is how most people run so many parts of their lives. That makes this an important debate. In essence, there are two, slightly separate questions. The first...
Chris Bryant: ...workforce. Vodafone states that the merger is expected to result in “£700 million of annual cost and capex synergies by the fifth…year post-completion”. I want to know what that means for jobs. The market has regularly complained about shortages in its workforce. It is difficult to see how the merged company could make those significant savings without significant job losses, but...
Chris Bryant: ...people have cancelled their broadband this year because of the cost of living crisis. That is an additional worry. Digital poverty, is, of course, a vicious circle. If someone has lost their job, they need to go online to search for jobs, or they might want to use the internet to be able to start up a new business, so it can become a vicious circle as someone becomes more and more...
Chris Bryant: ...running the APPG register. We have 762 APPGs at the moment. It is virtually impossible to have any kind of proper regulation or oversight of them, or examination of whether they are doing their job properly when we only have two members of staff, one of whom also does the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. So I pay enormous tribute to them for their work. They try to be as helpful...
Chris Bryant: ...on this subject for a very long time—and another is the Northern Ireland Secretary. Keeping APPGs going is sometimes problematic, because the people who are most interested sometimes get other jobs that mean that they cannot take part. But there is no reason why someone cannot continue the work without being in an APPG. I am not sure whether the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham...
Chris Bryant: ...back door for trans people, just as we used to have for lesbian and gay people. How do we ensure that freedom of speech is guaranteed for the whole House and that we are not abused for doing our job properly?
Chris Bryant: ...her more than anybody in the Chamber because the wisest thing I have ever done in my political career has been to recuse myself from chairing the Committee. She has done an absolutely admirable job. I also thank all the Committee members—as has often been referred to, the Conservative members in particular. I will not go into the other matters that, for other reasons, the Committee Chair...
Chris Bryant: ...officials—or, for that matter, those who are not members of any trade union here—to know how staff feel about some of the practices and the way we do our business in Parliament. There is a job of work to be done.
Chris Bryant: ...parties. Members have talked about vexatious complaints, and the most dangerous space for this is potentially within political parties. The Whips often have to do a very complicated and difficult job, and I think the pressure we sometimes put them under in this field is inappropriate. I do not like the fact that, for many years, we always used to push these things under the carpet. I think...
Chris Bryant: But earlier the Minister was praying in aid Lord Carlile, saying what a wonderful job he had done in helping the Government to bring forward wonderful amendments. This is one of his amendments, so it seems a bit odd to turn against this one. On the point the Minister just made about permissible donors, all that has to be checked is whether the person is on the electoral register. The...
Chris Bryant: I, too, congratulate our armed forces, which have done an amazing job so far, and commend the work of our diplomats. The Minister has said that there are 2,000 British citizens in Sudan, but does he think the number is more like 4,000, as has been cited elsewhere? What is the best figure he can put to the number of British citizens in Sudan? My memory of the Afghanistan situation is that...
Chris Bryant: Of course the Minister is defending the status quo—that’s his job—but I gently suggest that the whole system of the ministerial code is now bust. It does not fit with the parliamentary code of conduct. There are lesser rules for Ministers than there are for ordinary Back-Bench MPs. The new list, which was published only last week, is already an inaccurate list of Ministers, let alone a...
Chris Bryant: ...Russian economy that we need to debilitate so it cannot win the war. The Minister knows that I worry we are not sanctioning enough individuals. Sometimes it feels as if the Government feel that job is done. It is not. As several hon. Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), have said, there is an issue about sanctions busting. I am...
Chris Bryant: ...zone policy. I have had a letter from a Government Minister saying that it is all being refocused and is not about housing and planning any more but about productivity, improving growth and job creation. But no details are available, and all the bids have been binned. Is that not further evidence that we do not have a Government in this country anymore, just a bunch of rapscallions...
Chris Bryant: ...to be GPs, dermatologists, radiologists or radiographers. We are wasting millions of pounds on agency staff, meaning nurses are working alongside agency nurses who are not able to do the same job but are being paid twice as much. We have a 7.1 million-person backlog in the NHS in England, and that is not all the fault of covid: it was 4.8 million before covid even arrived. Bars,...