Today is a dark Monday as far as Parliament is concerned. There is no work going on publicly although no doubt behind the scenes there will be lots of activity both in terms of the maintenance of the buildings along with the administrative preparation for both Houses to reopen tomorrow. So while the MPs are away from their desks in Westminster today, perhaps they could focus on issues that are impacting on people in Sussex and consider how to improve matters. One classic example is how to resolve the funding crisis which is taking place for charities in West Sussex that provide accommodation for people who are Homeless. The plans to bring to an end the Housing Support Budget across the County will place hundreds of people who are provided with accommodation by groups such as Downslink YMCA, Open House in Crawley and WCHP in Worthing, back onto the streets. The cuts are due to take place in April but when such plans are set out, it raises a myriad of challenges for the charities as the premises they manage and in some cases own are not necessarily suitable for other purposes so the challenge then becomes how to deal with the properties as well as how to prepare the vulnerable people for an end to their housing provision. If this mistaken policy is not resolved in the next few weeks the impact on charities and residents and workers will be huge. Perhaps the eight Conservative MPs in West Sussex could sit down today with the Leader of the Council Louise Goldsmith and Cllr Amanda Jupp who is the person responsible for such matters and help them find a way of resolving this issue so that West Sussex does not make such a catastrophic mistake.

There are other matters that Sussex MPs could attend to today that would help them to prepare the ground for later on in the week. A discussion is taking place tomorrow morning as part of the BEIS Select Committee on the subject of small businesses and productivity. Peter Kyle is the only Sussex member of the Committee and whilst all of the businesses being interviewed are from outside of Sussex, perhaps he could do a bit of research into the recent collapse of Blair Installations who were a business in his constituency until the end of August and having lost large sums of money as a result of businesses that owed them money, they then went insolvent owing other businesses large sums of money, leading to a loss of jobs and knock on impact on other businesses. It is clear to those of us involved in this broad area of construction that the way in which multi layers of construction contracts are demanded, in large part by the public sector who don’t want to deal with too many businesses, that in fact greater security for sub contractors is needed if we are to avoid such domino type problems repeating themselves.

There are also debates planned for Wednesday morning on the sustainability of the nursery sector and the role of youth services in tackling youth violence. The nursery sector in Sussex is deeply under threat as a result of the way in which the Government has promised provision to families and then failed to fund the sector in a meaningful way. Whilst most Sussex MPs are unlikely to have any personal experience of the current state of play in this area, there are plenty of PreSchools and Nurseries that they could contact today so that they can contribute to the debate. There are also many youth charities in Sussex that MPs could contact which have an understanding of how their work if funded could have a very positive impact on young people. These include the Downslink YMCA mentioned earlier that would be able to help prepare them for the debate.

Whilst most of us are far more certain about who our MP is and what role they play, the number of Sussex based Peers is a bit more uncertain. However it is clear that this week there are some very interesting debates due to take place in the House of Lords on Thursday that could act as a useful way of informing us of how Brexit will play out. One is taking place as a request from Alf Dubs which focuses on the Impact on the Good Friday Agreement of our proposed departure and the other set up by Melvyn Bragg is on the Impact on the Arts of our withdrawal. Both of these themes are of relevance to our nation and indeed to Sussex. Let us hope Sussex based Peers will participate in them!