Commons watering-hole 'is virtually a gay bar' says Bryant

EYEBROWS were raised in Westminster last night after a Labour shadow minister said that the House of Commons' main watering-hole, the Strangers Bar, was now "virtually a gay bar".
 
Chris Bryant, MP for Rhondda and Labour's shadow immigration minister, was speaking during a debate on whether Parliament is doing enough to ensure minority groups are sufficiently represented.
 
Bryant - who is himself a homosexual - pointed out that there are now more openly gay MPs than ever before. "Indeed," he continued, "sometimes when you go into the Strangers Bar you feel as though you are in Rupert Street. It is virtually a gay bar now, and my husband sometimes worries about whether I should be allowed in there any more."

Bryant's husband is company secretary Jared Cranney. Their partnership ceremony, in 2010, was the first ever to be held in the Palace of Westminster. Rupert Street is in London's Soho district, long associated with the gay community.

Because MPs are allowed to invite outsiders to The Strangers Bar, it was not instantly clear whether Bryant's remarks might have been a comment on the many guests who congregate in the bar and in summer spill out onto the House of Commons terrace, as much as on his parliamentary colleagues.  

Despite his colourful anecdote, Bryant believes there should be still more gay MPs. "Even the numbers that we have, however, do not come near matching the numbers in the country in terms of the percentage of the population.
 
"It is a great sadness to me that there are still only two 'out' lesbians in Parliament." ·