Northern MPS handed Cabinet funding hotline to seal local deals

29 Conservative incomers link up with Northern Powerhouse minister to pitch spending projects

TWENTY-NINE new Conservative MPS elected in northern England have been given a hotline to a Cabinet minister to help them deliver local spending projects for their constituents.

Jake Berry, the Northern Powerhouse minister, is compiling a “golden book” of government commitments for northern seats to ensure that election pledges are delivered on.

He said that one of the Government’s goals at the next election, expected in 2024, “had to be retaining that blue wall” of Tory MPS and pouring “immovable concrete for the foundations of it”.

The minister – who sits in the Cabinet Office – has started to coordinate requests from MPS for help in their constituencies, and is using his cross-government position to push departments to deliver projects in northern seats.

Mr Berry held a meeting for some of the 29 new Tory MPS in northern seats in his House of Commons office this week which he temporarily renamed the “northern embassy”.

He also wrote to the group of MPS this week and has set up a Whatsapp group so they can feed in requests.

Mr Berry told The Daily Telegraph: “We have imbued in them this idea that we need to hunt as a pack.”

He said he had impressed on them an amended quotation from the character Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones: “When the election comes, the lone wolf will die but the pack will survive.”

He added: “If we come together as a group with the Northern Powerhouse minister as the man for the North in the Cabinet pushing other departments, we can be very effective.”

Mr Berry is already fielding requests for a relief road and local station capacity in Leigh, Greater Manchester, while a request has come to consider HS2 connectivity in Warrington, Cheshire.

He said: “They are already coming up with the spending ideas. Quite a lot are relatively modest in government spending, whether it be a new national park in the North or the Great Northumberland Forest.

“We are putting all those commitments in one place and calling it the ‘golden book’ of the North. It will include all MPS and existing MPS’ hopes and desires.

“It will be the gold standard against which we measure the Government and all other departments for their delivery in the North.

“It is a way of tracking and celebrating the significant progress that this Government is going to make for the North, and enabling all northern MPS to lobby, support and push for each other’s projects.”

Mr Berry added: “Our hopes and ambitions should be to make sure we reach into those other communities who will see we deliver for these new Conservative constituencies that they have not seen for a generation.

“People have taken a very bold step and lent us their support, and they want that to be on the basis that their lives are getting better.”