Sir Christopher John Bryant was born on 11 January 1962 and is a British politician and former Anglican priest who is the chair of the Committees on Standards and Privileges.
45 Facts About Chris Bryant
2.
Chris Bryant 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.
3.
Chris Bryant was elected for Rhondda at the 2001 general election.
4.
Chris 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.
5.
Chris Bryant was born in Cardiff, Wales, to a Scottish mother and a Welsh father.
6.
Chris Bryant grew up in Cardiff, Spain for five years in the 1960s, and Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
7.
Chris Bryant was educated at Cheltenham College, an independent school for boys in Cheltenham, and at Mansfield College, Oxford, where he read English.
8.
Chris Bryant was ordained deacon in 1986 and priest in 1987.
9.
Chris Bryant served as a curate at the Church of All Saints, High Wycombe from 1986 to 1989 and then as a Youth Chaplain in Peterborough, as well as travelling in Latin America.
10.
In 1991, Chris Bryant left the ordained ministry, after deciding that being gay and being a priest were incompatible.
11.
Chris Bryant was Labour candidate for Wycombe in the 1997 general election, and Head of European Affairs for the BBC from 1998.
12.
Chris Bryant says of his surprise selection, "I fell off the chair, and my opponents certainly did".
13.
Chris Bryant retained the seat comfortably at the 2001 general election with a 16,047 majority, one of the largest in the country.
14.
In 2003, Chris Bryant voted for participation in the Iraq war.
15.
Chris Bryant is a member of the Labour Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East group.
16.
From 2004 until 2007, Chris Bryant was chairman of the Labour Movement for Europe, succeeded by Mary Creagh MP.
17.
Chris Bryant is a signatory of the Henry Jackson Society principles.
18.
Chris Bryant was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs Charlie Falconer.
19.
In Gordon Brown's autumn 2008 reshuffle, Chris 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.
20.
Chris Bryant had his phone hacked later that year by the News of the World, a fact which became known to the Metropolitan Police when they seized material from the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.
21.
Chris 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.
22.
In October 2010, Chris 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.
23.
In October 2010, Chris Bryant described the coalition government's housing benefit reforms as poorer people "being socially engineered and sociologically cleansed out of London".
24.
Chris Bryant won the Stonewall Politician of the Year Award in 2011 for his work to support equality for lesbian, gay and bisexual people.
25.
In December 2014, Chris Bryant was moved from Shadow Minister for Welfare Reform to Shadow Minister for the Arts.
26.
In September 2015, following Jeremy Corbyn's election as Labour Party leader, Chris Bryant was appointed Shadow Leader of the House of Commons.
27.
Chris Bryant resigned from this position on 26 June 2016, along with other shadow ministers after the Brexit vote.
28.
Chris Bryant supported Owen Smith in the failed attempt to replace Jeremy Corbyn in the 2016 Labour Party leadership election.
29.
Chris Bryant supported Remain in the EU referendum in June 2016 and voted against the triggering of Article 50 in February 2017.
30.
In January 2017, as ex-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Russia, Chris 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.
31.
In November 2017, Chris 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.
32.
In December 2020, Chris Bryant became engaged in a row with the Commons speaker, Lindsay Hoyle.
33.
The disturbance started with Chris Bryant heckling the Prime Minister while standing near to a door.
34.
Some of those present thought that Chris Bryant then uttered an offensive expletive back to the Speaker although Chris Bryant denied this.
35.
Chris Bryant then exited the chamber of the Commons while the Speaker called for him.
36.
Hoyle said: "Mr Chris Bryant, I think we need to have this conversation later" and Chris Bryant left the chamber.
37.
In May 2020, Chris Bryant was elected as the Chair of the Commons Select Committee on Standards and Commons Select Committee of Privileges,.
38.
Chris Bryant 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.
39.
Chris 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.
40.
Chris Bryant is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
41.
Chris Bryant entered into a civil partnership with Jared Cranney on 27 March 2010.
42.
Chris Bryant was ridiculed by the press in 2003 when he posted a picture of himself wearing only underpants on a gay dating site, Gaydar.
43.
In March 2019, Chris Bryant said that he had undergone surgery for skin cancer.
44.
On 1 May 2022, Chris Bryant stated that he had been groped and "touched up" by older male MPs early in his career in the House of Commons.
45.
Chris Bryant was knighted in the 2023 New Year Honours for political and public service.