Speeches by Bryant.

“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.”

“Right. Yes, we are open to looking at it. We are working through how the specifics would work. I do not want to create an overly burdensome system and create an expectation that cannot be met.”

“The one specific that we have already agreed on is shorter projects. They will not have to be for a year. That will start in August of this year. We are still working on elements around portability, which is one of the key things for the creative industries. All the creative industries have been asking for it. It is ve…”

“It seems obvious to me that you have to have a portable and flexible system to be able to deliver a proper apprenticeship scheme in this sector.”

“Yes, that is one of the things that the DFE is looking at.”

“That is a matter for the DFE, I am afraid.”

“There is a whole series of things that are not specific to DCMS but apply across every sector. I have already referred to the issues that we have with freelancers and the fact that it is a very freelance-heavy industry. Some of the problems that we have had in the last 12 to 18 months have related to the strike in the …”

“Well, we could. We have been thinking about ways in which we could do that. It is not as simple as it might seem. I think I read in one of the submissions that you have had that there was a suggestion that the tax credits could be only applied to companies that signed up. We are looking through the legal niceties of al…”

“One of the main things—I think that the independent film tax credit will help with this—is that we need to make sure that we are making British content as well. Secondly, we need to make sure that British content can be exported well around the world so that it makes money. Thirdly, we need to have strong public servic…”

“I would love to make Alastair answer that question, but he is smiling at me and saying it is my job. I think it is still a political football, but the BBC is one of the greatest cultural institutions the world has. It is renowned around the world and sometimes given credit for things that it has not even made because t…”

“The BFI gets income from itself, from showing films and stuff, and it gets income from grant in aid and the lottery. That mixture renders it £157 million a year or something like that. We will write to you and say if I have that figure wrong.”