Oral Answers to Questions

Alicia Kearns Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dehenna Davison]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for speaking so passionately about the bid for her constituency. I am certainly willing to engage with her and Ministers at the Department for Transport to see what more we can do.

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

Rutland and Melton councils have put forward a brilliant blueprint for rural innovation in our levelling-up bid, focused on health and transport. The context is an urgent need to put social mobility into funding formulas for those areas of deprivation otherwise hidden by affluence. Will my right hon. Friend do what he said he would do back in February: take up an offer that is too good to be true by coming to Rutland and Melton to discuss the bid and the future of social mobility funding?

[Michael Gove]

What an alluring invitation—and yes. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) pointed out earlier, Leicestershire and Rutland are relatively poorly funded in comparison with other local authorities, which is why the particular plight of deprived communities in my hon. Friend’s constituency and elsewhere is at the forefront of our minds.