Lowdown on levelling up for new MP

SHE was swept into Parliament in 2019 as a Northern 'red wall' MP while still in her 20s on a wave of enthusiasm for Boris Johnson as he promised his levelling up agenda would finally revitalise the region's forgotten towns.

-  ROB PARSONS

Since then, Dehenna Davison, the first Tory MP ever to represent Bishop of Auckland in County Durham, has even spent a year as a Minister in the government department dedicated to levelling up.

But it turns out the task of undoing decades-old regional disparities requires a lot of patience.

Speaking on this week's episode of The Northern Agenda podcast, Ms Davison describes arriving at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities last September with "all these great ideas" and wanting to quickly announce which areas were getting millions from the latest round of the £4.8bn Levelling Up Fund.