Speeches by Bryant.

“I do not know where we will end up with the BBC charter review. It is not in my area of responsibility. However, I have always thought of the £3.75 billion licence fee as a massive production budget. Wherever we end up, I want us to have a massive production budget for making television, and not just high-end televisio…”

“If you want me to amplify that, this goes to a point I made earlier, and I think Peter Kosminsky made it to you in writing as well—he came in to see me in January. His point was that “Wolf Hall” would struggle to be made now. It was all BBC money. I think others have told you that something like 13 things that have bee…”

“I am trying to avoid too many levies if I possibly can. I am conscious that following the recommendation from this Committee, we are pushing for the levy on arena tickets to support small music venues. Peter Kosminsky has made this argument to me, and I know that some other countries in Europe have something similar, b…”

“If there is evidence, we will look at it. At the moment, we are not looking at changing it, but if people come forward with evidence from the sector then we will look at it.”

“I think Netflix’s “Heartstopper” is also still produced by a British production company, with the rights staying with them.”

“I cannot find a figure for the square footage of film studio space in Hollywood, but we think that we are pretty much on a par, if not ahead of Hollywood.”

“We do not have a fixed figure.”

“Gainsborough did not survive. Gainsborough was one from the same year as Ealing, but it did not survive.”

“I said earlier that a lot of post-production was going to Canada, because their tax credit was more competitive. That is one of the reasons why we moved ahead with the VFX tax credit. That is precisely the reason why I think we need to keep these things under review, while trying to provide as much continuity as possib…”

““South—bad”, “north—good”, or any other version of that, is certainly not in my mind.”

“I do not know about that. The only point I would make about it is that lots of things that will affect a decision about whether a Hollywood movie is made in the UK or not. Tom Cruise has committed something in the region of £6 billion, I think, in recent years to the UK. One thing that might matter sometimes is whether…”

“There were two things: first, we had a massive explosion because of covid, and then, we had a very sudden contraction because of the end of covid, the strike in the United States and concerns about AI. There was a point last year, for instance, when all the cinema companies were telling me that they would not have anyt…”

“, I know of lots of people in the industry who had absolutely no work for six months, nine months. This is another issue to do with freelancers. I know that that was referred to in the debate yesterday afternoon. We are talking about an industry that relies very heavily on freelancers. There are great benefits to it. L…”

“Well, just having more space means that there is more availability. Over the last few years, we have made it more and more difficult for people to open new studio spaces. Planning laws and so on have intervened, and that makes it difficult even when you have very significant figures like James Cameron supporting partic…”

““Wolf Hall” was made in 82 days on location in 82 different venues, many of them historic sites. The cast all tell me they were freezing from day one until the very end. Incidentally, I have meshed this with our tourism strategy, because lots of international visitors to the UK want to see the places where films that t…”

““Starring GREAT Britain”.”

“Have you seen it yet?”

“Excellent.”

“It is, but it is really difficult to choose what to keep and what not to keep. What we think today that people might look back at in 20 years is not necessarily what they will want. Would we keep all episodes of “The Goodies”? Choose for yourself. “Yes, Prime Minister” “Yes, Minister”—yes. These are difficult decisions…”

“We are looking at copyright.”