'Jobs for the boys' claim over senior Tory Lord McLoughlin becoming Transport for the North chair

Dame Diana Johnson, the Labour MP for Hull North, requested a debate in Parliament on her concerns that TfN is at risk of being turned into a "neutered talking shop".

It follows Lord McLoughlin, a former Tory MP and Transport Secretary, being recommended as the new £60,000-a-year chairman of the organisation, with its board set to approve his appointment at a meeting next week.

The planned appointment has drawn accusations that Lord McLoughlin's appointment is in part an attempt to neutralise the criticism of Northern mayors who sit on the TfN board and who strongly condemned the Government's Integrated Rail Plan as "woefully inadequate" when it was published in November.

Dame Diana said: "There is more than a whiff of “jobs for the boys” if the report in The Yorkshire Post is right—that the former Tory MP, now noble Lord Patrick McLoughlin is to be the new chair of Transport for the North.

"Given that Transport for the North’s responsibilities have been stripped back and that it has been ignored by the Government when setting out the clear level of funding that the north needs for transport, rather than what was announced in the integrated rail plan, may we please have a debate on whether the Government intend Transport for the North to be only a neutered talking shop?"

Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg said he did not accept a debate was necessary and called criticism of Lord McLoughlin's potential appointment as "eccentric" given his previous experience in the transport field.

Mr Rees-Mogg said: "We would have to set aside far too much time if we were to debate the many virtues of my noble Friend Lord McLoughlin, who is a former Transport Secretary.

"I do not know whether the rumours are true - I have not seen the report - but to come to this House and complain about the giving of a job in transport to a former Transport Secretary, one of the best informed people in the country about transport, is, in a word, eccentric."

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