Northern Powerhouse Minister will attend Cabinet under Boris Johnson

The Northern Powerhouse Minister will have a seat at Boris Johnson’s Cabinet table, the Yorkshire Post can reveal.
Conservative party leader and incoming Prime Minister Boris JohnsonConservative party leader and incoming Prime Minister Boris Johnson
Conservative party leader and incoming Prime Minister Boris Johnson

According to sources close to Mr Johnson, the role will be elevated as part of a wider push to release the economic potential of the North.

The brief is currently held by Rossendale and Darwen MP and Johnson-ally Jake Berry, although it is not yet known whether he will continue in the role.

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Under Mr Johnson, it is understood that whoever takes on the ministerial post will attend Cabinet for the first time.

The future Prime Minister first revealed the plan in an interview with this newspaper during the Tory leadership campaign.

He said: “There will be somebody absolutely representing the Northern Powerhouse and the interests of the North, you bet, in the Cabinet.”

Mr Berry, who has been in the role since 2017, has consistently called for a seat at the Cabinet table.

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Speaking about the brief last month he said Treasury cost-benefit rules should be relaxed in order to free up cash for northern projects.

“You have to go beyond just counting the costs and look at the benefit and I think that a Cabinet position will enable you to make that change,” he said.

He added: “Some periods in the last two years, it has been a very lonely furrow that I have ploughed driving the Northern Powerhouse on across Government,” he said.

“And I hope that whoever takes this role, and I sincerely hope it is me whoever is Prime Minister, that we really now drive forward the North’s economy, that we really now start to get a cross-Government commitment, where we don’t get Government departments standing in the way of driving forward the North of England.”