Prime Minister Liz Truss: you promised you would protect Doncaster Sheffield Airport - our question to you is: will you?

That was the promise made by Prime Minister Liz Truss to the region during her debut Prime Minister’s Questions when concerns for the future of Doncaster Sheffield Airport were put to her by Don Valley MP Nick Fletcher.

Now, without question, that intervention is writ large across the North of England as an early litmus test for Ms Truss and her Government: will you, Prime Minister, honour the promise you made to Yorkshire and the North, or not?

Perhaps more importantly, will the Prime Minister honour her promise, which, at the time, offered significant comfort to the families of those 800 workers whose employment is directly and critically linked to operations at DSA.

With his first thoughts for those people, in a statement Oliver Coppard, South Yorkshire Mayor said: “ The only people who can now intervene to keep DSA operational are national Government. Liz Truss said she would protect the airport. Now is the moment to turn those words into action. We stand ready to work with the Government.”

However, when it comes to transport infrastructure, the leaders of this region have consistently stood ready to work with Government, yet her predecessors have done nothing but let us down, to the point where the railway imploded completely on itself, causing franchises to be handed back to Government .

This is an opportunity for the new broom in Number 10 to sweep clean some of those previous disappointments and to show signs that the 15.2m people who live and work in this part of the country do matter to those who pull the strings in Westminster.

And so the question now, is: what is a Liz Truss promise worth?