Product Code Database
Sir Christopher John Bryant (born 11 January 1962) is a British politician and former Anglican priest who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Rhondda and Ogmore, and previously Rhondda, since 2001. A member of the Labour Party, he was the Minister of State for Data Protection and Telecoms and Minister of State for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism from 2024 to 2025.
Born in Cardiff, Bryant was privately educated at Cheltenham College before studying English at Mansfield College, Oxford. After graduating with a further degree in theology, he worked as a Church of England priest, as well as having roles at the BBC and Common Purpose. He was elected for Rhondda at the 2001 general election.
He previously served in government as Deputy Leader of the House of Commons from 2008 to 2009 and Under-Secretary of State for Europe and Asia from 2009 to 2010. Bryant served in the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Culture Secretary in 2015 and Shadow Leader of the House of Commons from 2015 to 2016, before resigning in protest at Jeremy Corbyn's leadership.
He studied English at Mansfield College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1986. Although initially a member of the Conservative Party, and an elected office-holder in the Oxford University Conservative Association, he joined the Labour Party in 1986.
From 1983 to 1986, after completing his first degree, Bryant trained for ordained ministry at Ripon College Cuddesdon in Oxfordshire. During this time, he also studied theology at Oxford. He was ordained in the Church of England as a deacon in 1986 by Richard Harries, and as a priest in 1987. The first service he led following this ordination was the funeral of Michael Croft, the founder of the National Youth Theatre; he had also once sexually abused Bryant. He served his curacy at the Church of All Saints, High Wycombe from 1986 to 1989. He was then a youth chaplain in Peterborough, as well as travelling in Latin America. In 1991, Bryant left the ordained ministry, after deciding that being gay was incompatible with being a priest. Statements made by Bishop of Oxford Richard Harries also influenced his decision.
In 1996, Bryant became a full-time author, writing biographies of Stafford Cripps and Glenda Jackson.
From 1998 until his election to Parliament in 2001, Bryant was the Head of European Affairs for the BBC.
Bryant's selection for the very safe Labour seat of Rhondda in South Wales in 2000 surprised many people given his background – gay, a former Anglican cleric, and someone who had been a Conservative as a student. He says of his surprise selection, "I fell off the chair, and my opponents certainly did". Fifty-two people applied for the candidature and a local councillor was the favourite to win. Bryant was elected as MP for Rhondda at the 2001 general election with a majority of 16,047 and 68.3% of the vote.
In 2003, Bryant voted for participation in the Iraq war. He is a member of the Labour Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East group.
From 2004 until 2007, Bryant was chairman of the Labour Movement for Europe. Bryant is a signatory of the Henry Jackson Society principles.
At the 2005 general election, Bryant was re-elected with a decreased vote share of 68.1% but an increased majority of 16,242.
On 5 September 2006, with Siôn Simon, he coordinated a prominent letter which was signed by 15 Labour backbenchers calling for Tony Blair's immediate resignation.
Bryant was the Parliamentary private secretary to the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs Charlie Falconer. In Gordon Brown's autumn 2008 reshuffle, Bryant was promoted from his role as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Harriet Harman to the ministerial position of Deputy Leader of the House of Commons otherwise known as Parliamentary Secretary to the House of Commons. This was followed by another move in the June 2009 reshuffle, when he moved to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. On 13 October 2009, he was also appointed Minister for Europe.
Bryant called for and led the parliamentary debates on referring the phone hacking scandal to the Standards and Privileges Committee on 9 September 2010, and the Emergency Debate on whether there should be a judge led enquiry on 6 July 2011 which led to the setting up of the Leveson Inquiry.
In October 2010, Bryant stood as one of 49 candidates for election to the 19 places in the Shadow Cabinet in the internal Labour Party poll, receiving 77 votes, 29th position on the list.
In October 2010, Bryant described the coalition government's housing benefit reforms as poorer people "being socially engineered and sociologically cleansed out of London". The use of the term "cleansing" was criticised by members of the coalition, including deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, who called Bryant's comment "offensive to people who had witnessed ethnic cleansing in other parts of the world".
In 2011, in the House of Commons, he criticised Prince Andrew, Duke of York for a number of alleged indiscretions.
Bryant won the Stonewall Politician of the Year Award in 2011 for his work to support equality for lesbian, gay and bisexual people.http://www.lesbilicious.co.uk/ Stonewall 2011 He was given a score of 100% in favour of lesbian, gay and bisexual equality by Stonewall. On 5 February 2013, he voted in favour in the House of Commons Second Reading vote on same-sex marriage in Britain.
Following the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, Bryant told the Commons 'I am afraid that the international response... has thus far been pitiful and spineless. People have even trotted out in this Chamber the argument that most of the people in Crimea are Russian speaking and wanted to join Russia in the first place. Can Members not hear history running through the decades?... There has been little honour in the way that Britain, France and the United States, having signed up to the Budapest memorandum, which guaranteed the territorial integrity of Ukraine, now make lots of great speeches but introduce the measliest level of sanctions and targeted interventions against Russian individuals... A Russian friend of mine says that Putin is not yet mad. That may be true, but what will our surrendering and our appeasement do for his sanity?'
In December 2014, Bryant was moved from Shadow Minister for Welfare Reform to Shadow Minister for the Arts. In this position, he suggested in January 2015 that too many successful artists such as "James Blunt and their ilk" had been educated at private schools, and that he wanted to see more encouragement for the arts for people from a variety of backgrounds, even though Bryant himself attended a private school. Blunt said that Bryant was a "narrow-minded 'classist gimp' who was motivated by the 'politics of jealousy'"; Bryant responded by claiming that Blunt should not be "so blooming precious" and that he was not "knocking his success" but attempting to draw attention to the lack of diversity in the arts.
At the 2015 general election, Bryant was again re-elected with a decreased vote share of 50.7% and a decreased majority of 7,455.
In September 2015, following Jeremy Corbyn's election as Labour Party leader, Bryant was appointed Shadow Leader of the House of Commons. He resigned from this position on 26 June 2016, along with other shadow ministers after the Brexit vote. He supported Owen Smith in the failed attempt to replace Jeremy Corbyn in the 2016 Labour Party leadership election.
He supported Remain in the EU referendum in June 2016 and voted against the triggering of Article 50 in February 2017.
In January 2017, as ex-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Russia, Bryant claimed that the Russian government orchestrated a homophobic campaign to remove him from this position, saying that the Russian government has acquired kompromat on high-profile Conservative Party MPs including Boris Johnson, Liam Fox, Alan Duncan and David Davis.
On 12 January 2017, Bryant bemused his fellow MPs and Speaker of the House John Bercow, when he wished Bercow happy "kiss a ginger day", during business questions.
At the snap 2017 general election, Bryant was again re-elected, with an increased vote share of 64.1% and an increased majority of 13,746.
Following the general election in 2017, Bryant came first in the ballot for Private Members Bills, and after consulting his constituents introduced the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill, which introduced a new offence of assaulting an emergency worker. It received royal assent on 13 November 2018 as the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018.
In November 2017, Bryant called for the arrest of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, if he travels to the United Kingdom, after the President shared a comment on the social media website Twitter from a member of the far-right group Britain First that related to radical Islamic events. Bryant stated: "The Prime Minister should make it absolutely clear that if Donald Trump comes to this country he'll be arrested for inciting religious hatred and therefore he'd be better off not coming at all."
Following John Bercow's resignation as Speaker of the House of Commons on 31 October 2019, Bryant stood in the election for a new speaker on 4 November 2019, losing to Lindsay Hoyle by 213 to 325.
At the 2019 general election, Bryant was again re-elected, with a decreased vote share of 54.4% and a decreased majority of 11,440.
In May 2020, Bryant was elected as the Chair of the Commons Select Committee on Standards and Commons Select Committee of Privileges, . In October 2021, he chaired the Standards Committee's decision on the sanction to be applied to Owen Paterson for breaching lobbying rules relating to paid advocacy which triggered the parliamentary second jobs controversy. In April 2022, due to having already expressed views about the Partygate scandal, Bryant recused himself from the subsequent investigation by the Privileges Committee into whether Boris Johnson had committed contempt of parliament over statements to the House of Commons concerning alleged parties.
Bryant came tenth in the Private Members Bill ballot in the 2021–2022 Session of Parliament and introduced the Acquired Brain Injury Bill on 10 November 2021, which would require the Government to produce, implement and review a national strategy for acquired brain injury. He withdrew the Bill when the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Sajid Javid, announced that Bryant and Gillian Keegan, the minister for Care and Mental Health, would co-chair a cross-government programme board to draw up a national strategy in December 2021. Keegan said: “All Government departments are invited to join the board. The strategy will be kept under review and revised periodically, to ensure it continues to reflect the priority areas and actions needed to support those living with ABI, and their families.”
In December 2021, Bryant told the BBC in an interview that he felt "less physically safe as a gay man than he did 30 years ago." While denying that Boris Johnson himself was homophobic, he accused those around him of being happy to "stir the pot." As evidence, he cited the government's stance on transgender people and their attitude towards conversion therapy.
Bryant campaigned for the UK Government to introduce Magnitsky Sanctions on those who abuse human rights around the world and co-chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Magnitsky Sanctions with Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP and is a Member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
In the 2023 British shadow cabinet reshuffle, he was appointed Shadow Minister for the Creative Industries and Digital.
Bryant was elected MP for the Rhondda and Ogmore constituency which replaced the former Rhondda seat at the 2024 general election.
Following Bryant's admission, the SNP called for a "full independent investigation" into his comments, which they said proved Labour deliberately sought to derail their motion. MP Kirsty Blackman criticised Bryant's comments, saying: "These damning revelations show Sir Keir Starmer pulled every dirty trick in the Westminster book to wreck the SNP's vote on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Israel."
He was ridiculed by the press in 2003 when he posted a picture of himself wearing only underpants on a gay dating site, Gaydar. Bryant later reflected upon the affair, saying, "It was a wound but it's a rather charming scar now. I had a period when I barely slept and it was horrible, but I'm very lucky in having a supportive set of friends – MP friends and others – and they looked after me." At the time, the media predicted that he would not survive politically, and there was much talk of his possible deselection. In 2013, he reflected on the incident, saying that the whole affair actually boosted his majority as an MP.
On 25 September 2006, The Guardian ran four spoof diary articles called "Chris Bryant's Manchester Diary", followed by a clarification that they were parodies not written by Bryant.
In March 2019, Bryant said that he had undergone surgery for Cancer staging melanoma, a skin cancer. In May 2024, Bryant announced that his cancer had spread to his lung, and was undergoing immunotherapy for it; he urged people to "please take skin cancer seriously". in July 2025 he tweeted that the cancer appeared to be in remission.
On 1 May 2022, Bryant said that he had been groped and "touched up" by older male MPs early in his career in the House of Commons.
In 2025, Bryant revealed that he had been sexually abused by the founder of the National Youth Theatre Michael Croft when he attended the drama group in London at the age of 16.
He is a member of the Fabian Society.
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|
|
