A long-standing parliamentary lobby journalist who has served a group of regional titles for more than 20 years is leaving to join a national Sunday paper.

Jon Walker, pictured below interviewing former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is to be the new deputy political editor of the Sunday Express.

Jon has worked in the parliamentary lobby since 2001, providing political coverage for the Birmingham Mail and its sister titles in the Midlands.

At times his role has also encompassed other Reach plc-owned titles including Newcastle’s Chronicle and Journal, while he recently launched politlcal newsletter the Midlands Message.

During his time time reporting for Birmingham’s newspapers and websites, Jon has covered the 9/11 terror attacks, the invasion of Iraq, the banking crisis, Brexit and Covid-19.

He revealed his forthcoming departure in a first-person piece published in the Mail last week in which he also lamented the decline in the number of regional lobby correspondents.

When Jon first joined the lobby there were seven correspondents serving regional morning newspapers in England and around ten serving regional evenings.

Only three now remain – Jon, his Reach plc colleague Dan Donoghue who covers the group’s Northern dailies, and Yorkshire Post correspondent Caitlin Doherty.

Wrote Jon: “It’s easy to imagine that readers aren’t interested in politics. That’s certainly a view I’ve come across in the local and regional news industry.

“But it’s wrong. Because a lot of the things people are most concerned about are political issues.

“Can you see a GP when you need one? Can you afford to pay your gas bill? Why are drug dealers operating openly in the high street, and why can’t the police do something about it?

“Whether actively supporting a campaign by an MP or simply giving them publicity, local news organisations can work with local politicians to make things happen.

“Despite this, it’s sometimes hard to convince decision-makers in the news industry that politics matters. I’m not talking about my colleagues here on the Post & Mail and BirminghamLive (the website affiliated with the papers). After all, they still employ me.

“But there used to be a number of regional correspondents working at Westminster. Few are left.

“The work we do is useful. We attend, for example, regular briefings with the Prime Minister’s spokesperson, where we have been able to ask about issues such as local Covid lockdowns, the Levelling Up White Paper and the Government’s plans for new rail lines in the Midlands and the North.

“My regular coffees with the late Jack Dromey, the Birmingham MP who knew everything going on in the city, provided an insight that couldn’t have been gained any other way. But I had to be where he was.”

Despite this, Jon sees encouraging signs – both in the growth of political coverage online and in the recruitment of new political reporters both in the lobby and in the regions.

“Our politics coverage isn’t shrinking. It’s growing. We have recruited fantastic new political reporters, such as my colleagues Jane Haynes and Richard Guttridge, in recent years,” he wrote.

“A team of “trending news” reporters monitor the big events at Westminster and provide up-to-the-minute coverage. That’s on top of the Local Democracy Reporting Service scheme, in which the BBC funds reporters to cover local councils, with their work appearing on BirminghamLive and elsewhere.

“Meanwhile, papers and their associated websites in the North of England have recruited a new lobby correspondent to represent them at Westminster. For the first time in many years, great northern papers such as the Manchester Evening News and Liverpool Echo have someone reporting for them from Parliament.

“I’ve been writing columns for the Birmingham Post for more than 20 years. This is my last one. Next week I start a new role elsewhere.

“It’s been a great pleasure and a privilege to have served you for so long.”