Speeches by Bryant.

“The thing is, Tom Cruise does all his own stunts, doesn’t he? I am a little bit nervous about being dangled off the back of a helicopter or dumped in a vat of—I don’t know. [Interruption.] The shadow Minister says he will happily arrange it. Well, then, I invite him to see the Rhondda tunnel; we can dangle him down a h…”

“That is a very fair point; I am happy to do that.”

“Interestingly, I was at the Bad Wolf studios in Cardiff last week, and one thing Jane Tranter raised with me was how important the security of knowing that they have a number of projects in their studios has been to taking on apprentices in the company. They have been making not just “Doctor Who” but “His Dark Material…”

“The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I have already had discussions on other matters relating to the creative industries with Members of the Executive in Northern Ireland, and I think I have another call next week, so I will of course make sure they are consulted. He makes a very good point about tourism. An aw…”

“The hon. Member refers to some things I have already spoken about, but why did he not make his film in Devon? He has obviously not got the message from his party colleagues. There are lots of great British films that will be watched in American cinemas over the weeks to come, and I am certain that no President would wa…”

“No, I am not sacking them. You cannot call for civil servants to be sacked from the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, otherwise people will call for you to be sacked. As the Jamaican reggae artists Tenor Saw and Bob Marley have lyricised, “Life is one big road with lots of signs”. This debate has shone a light on not just n…”

“I am sure that you look forward to every response from a Government Minister, Madam Deputy Speaker. I note that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South and Walkden (Yasmin Qureshi) ended her speech by saying, “Let us light the way for the future of British neon”. I am grateful to her for securing this important deba…”

“That is the use of irony, which is also, of course, another fundamentally Greek concept. I want to say at the outset that the marbles are an extraordinarily significant and important part of Greek and—I would argue—western artistic and architectural understanding. Nobody should ever diminish their importance. Indeed, i…”

“If the hon. Gentleman had let me get on to that subject, we would have got there earlier, but he got to make his point—I think he divided the speech he would otherwise have made into two interventions. That is not something that I ever did when I was—”

“I will, but it will limit the amount of time I have to respond to the questions.”

“Kalimera, Mr Vickers. It is very good to have this debate and I commend the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) for bringing it to the House. Interestingly, it is the first one on this issue in this Parliament, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak about it. The hon. Gentleman is absolutel…”

“Just before Matthew comes in, the one other thing I would say, just in terms of economic growth, is that we know it is projected that satellite demand by 2035 will add up to something like $50 billion. If we only had 2% of that, that is $1 billion coming into the UK economy. Of course, this is an area where we want to …”

“I am not going to take it personally that everybody keeps on saying we need a better Minister for space or whatever. In fact, there are people also clamouring for a Minister for tourism who should be in the Cabinet. Over the years, I have heard these suggestions. Everybody always wants a Minister for this, that and the…”

“We did not have the meeting yesterday because we were coming today, by the way. It had been planned for a while.”

“I am the space tsar. I am the space commander, although it is not actually my title.”

“Obviously, MoD has a very specific role to play. We also had the FCDO there yesterday because, as I referred to earlier—Baroness Ashton will know this from her previous job in the European Commission—there are very significant issues in relation to space that apply not only to the UK, but also to our overseas territori…”

“It was one of the things we talked about yesterday. Education was not there yesterday, but it is a key thing that we need to make sure of. It is about the pipeline into these skills. I read the evidence session that you had in February. Some of those points were made about Northumbria University, which I visited back i…”

“You make it sound like I want to take over the universe. It is part of the advanced manufacturing sector. A draft report is being produced at the moment. I am not sure quite when DBT will choose to publish all of the industrial strategy. That is in the process at the moment, and space is a key part of it, and should be…”

“I am regretting the “space commander” line already, not least because there is a space commander, who will probably have a word with me later. If I could just make one prefatory remark, and then both of my colleagues will probably come in, we also know that we will have to have a sovereign capability. We cannot simply …”

“We went through pretty rigorous due diligence before putting our £20 million into Orbex. You have already heard from Orbex, so you know the specific niche into which they are seeking to insert themselves. I would say that they are doing so pretty effectively.”