This time five years ago, the then Sir Patrick Vallance was omnipresent on our television screens as he helped to brief the nation on the unfolding Covid-19 pandemic.

But council chiefs will now have more chance of spotting the recently ennobled Lord Vallance than News at Six viewers following the science minister's appointment as the Government's ‘champion' for the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor, which runs between the two cities via Milton Keynes and Bedfordshire.