Don't complain about train fare cost if you want Yorkshire MPs to represent region - Yorkshire Post letter from Lord Wallace of Saltaire

If Yorkshire Post readers want their MPs to represent their local and regional interests in London, then they should not complain about the cost of regular train travel between their constituencies and Parliament (The Yorkshire Post, February 8).

I do not claim expenses for the cost of my weekly travel, which must amount to well over £2,000 a year.

But I value the conversations I have in and around Bradford, which provide a different perspective from those of my colleagues who live in and around London, and see it as an important part of my role to represent Yorkshire interests – as do my Lords colleagues from the Conservative and Labour Parties, with whom I work on regional issues.

The government of England is absurdly over-centralised. Detailed decisions that were taken by local authorities half a century ago, or by the West Riding County Council, are now taken by

Ministers in London – often with little or no knowledge of Yorkshire. The ministerial announcement some weeks ago that the Integrated Rail Strategy would now ‘electrify the rail line from

Leeds to Bradford’ was a classic London error; I informed a surprised Lords Minister that there are actually two lines between Leeds and Bradford, and one has been electrified for decades.

The damp squib of the Levelling Up White Paper, with no new money set aside to reduce England’s gaping regional inequalities, shows how important it is to have strong and well-informed voices in Westminster for Yorkshire. We need our MPs to be out and about in the county every weekend, so that they can tell our very southern-oriented government that our voices also count.