At the end of the Parliament period for the closure for the Easter Adjournment there were some very interesting statements made. One of them came from Matt Rodda who is the Labour MP for Reading East and he was speaking on Thursday last week. He did comment “I want to take this opportunity to champion a very important local campaign in Reading and Berkshire” and he carried on for a few seconds with that focus and then he followed with this introduction “I want to update the House briefly on where I am with the campaign, but also to point out some of its important features and urge the Government to support the local bid for an arts-based solution for the building” A few seconds later he then stated the following comment.

Similarly sized cities and towns in the south-east of England, such as Brighton, Oxford and Southampton, have large arts organisations based in purpose-built theatres, and much bigger centres than the ones we have in Reading, although we are the second largest urban area in the south-east of England after the Greater Brighton area.