Sir Chris John Bryant (born 11 January 1962) is a Welsh politician and former Anglican priest who has served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland since 2026. A member of the Labour Party, he has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Rhondda and Ogmore, and previously Rhondda, since 2001.
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 served as a Church of England priest until 1991. He worked for Common Purpose from 1994 to 1996 and at the BBC from 1998 to 2001. Bryant was elected to Hackney Borough Council in 1993, representing Leabridge ward and serving until 1998. After his unsuccessful candidacy at the 1997 general election for the Wycombe constituency, Bryant was elected for the Labour safe seat of Rhondda at the 2001 general election. He was reelected at the 2005 general election and called for the resignation of Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2006. Bryant became the Parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to Charlie Falconer and later Harriet Harman, before joining the government frontbench as Deputy Leader of the House of Commons in 2008 under Gordon Brown. He later served as Under-Secretary of State for Europe and Asia from 2009 to 2010.
Following Labour's defeat at the 2010 general election, Bryant became the shadow europe minister. He unsuccessfully stood for the shadow cabinet in the 2010 election, and subsequently became a shadow home and justice minister under Ed Miliband. He held various junior shadow portfolios between 2010 and 2015. Following Labour's defeat at 2015 general election, Bryant was promoted to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Culture Secretary. He became Shadow Leader of the House of Commons in 2015 under Jeremy Corbyn, before resigning in protest at Corbyn's leadership in 2016. On the backbenches, he served as the chair of several select committees, and stood in the 2019 Speaker of the House of Commons election but was defeated by Lindsay Hoyle. He returned to the frontbench as a shadow culture minister under Keir Starmer in 2023.
Following Labour's victory in the 2024 general election, Bryant returned to government as Minister of State for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism and Minister of State for Data Protection and Telecoms under Starmer. In the 2025 government reshuffle, he was appointed Minister of State for Trade. After Andy Burnham became Prime Minister in July 2026, Bryant was promoted to cabinet as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Chris Bryant was born on 11 January 1962 in Cardiff, to a Scottish mother and a Welsh father. Bryant grew up in Cardiff (where his father worked for five years), Spain for five years in the 1960s (leading to him speaking fluent Spanish), and Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. He was educated at Cheltenham College, an independent school for boys.
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; Croft had 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.
Early political career (1992–2001)
After leaving the priesthood in 1991, Bryant made a career move and began work as the election agent to the Holborn and St Pancras Constituency Labour Party, where he helped Frank Dobson hold his seat in the 1992 general election. From 1993, he was Local Government Officer for the Labour Party; he lived in Hackney and was elected to Hackney Borough Council in 1993, representing Leabridge ward and serving until 1998. He became Chairman of the Christian Socialist Movement. From 1994 to 1996, he was London manager of the charity Common Purpose.
In 1996, Bryant became a full-time author, writing biographies of Stafford Cripps and Glenda Jackson. At the 1997 general election, Bryant was the Labour candidate for Wycombe, winning 35.4% of the vote and coming second behind the incumbent Conservative MP Ray Whitney.
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.
From 2004 until 2007, Bryant was chairman of the Labour Movement for Europe.
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.
On 11 March 2003, as part of an inquiry into Privacy and Press Intrusion by the Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, he asked Rebekah Wade (now Brooks) whether she had ever paid police officers for information. Seated beside Andy Coulson, the editor of the News of the World, she said 'yes'. 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. Bryant, along with John Prescott and Brian Paddick, sought judicial review of the Metropolitan Police in an attempt to force them to contact all the victims of phone hacking by the News of the World. The Metropolitan Police accepted their liability and he won damages of £30,000 from News International in 2012.
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.
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.