Oral Answers to Questions

Alicia Kearns Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

What steps the Government are taking to deliver civil service jobs outside London.

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)]

What assessment he has made of the east midlands and Leicestershire as a potential location to help deliver the Places for Growth programme.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

What steps the Government are taking to deliver civil service jobs outside London.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Members should not walk in front of a Member during the answer to their question.

[Alicia Kearns [V]]

This Government’s levelling-up agenda will transform our nation, but does my right hon. Friend agree that we cannot deliver this agenda unless we level up both cities and rural areas such as Rutland and Melton? Can I invite him and his officials to visit the rural capital of food, Melton Mowbray, to see why nowhere in the country makes a more compelling offer for a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs office and the transformative Places for Growth programme than Melton, and why this will show the Government’s commitment to the east midlands and to rural areas?

[Michael Gove]

Rutland and Melton could not wish for a more effective advocate than my hon. Friend. She talked to my colleague Lord Agnew and me in the Cabinet Office just last week to press the case for a relocation of jobs to Melton. It has a superb agricultural college, is at the heart of our food-producing countryside, produces superb products and also has many of the facilities, logistical and otherwise, that would recommend it to Government Departments, and I look forward to working with her on the prospect of relocation.