Today our Parliament will finally re-open after far too many weeks of close down by the Government due to an unrealistic period of their leader being replaced. Today we will discover the new Prime Minister and tomorrow Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and his replacement will visit the Queen Elizabeth in Balmoral so that she can formally transfer the power from one Prime Minister to the next one. Given that Johnson and several other people claimed publicly that he was voted by the majority of people in our Nation back in December 2019, the new Prime Minister will need to either reject that claim or admit that they are not endorsed by anyone in our nation outside of the Conservative Party.

This week along with the Government adopting the new Prime Minister, according to the Parliamentary planning list there is only one Sussex MP who has been listed to determine what will be taking place this week. On Thursday Sally-Ann Hart who is the Hastings and Rye MP is indicated to be the organiser for a “General debate on the Future of Coastal Communities”. Along with considering what is due to take place this week it is interesting to observe what has happened since the closure of Parliament back over 6 weeks ago. Now of course each of the local MPs will have had the opportunity to engage in their constituency as well as to take summer holidays and some of the Conservative MPs also promoted a potential PM candidate in public. In addition the Parliament system reports on the formal involvement that takes place by individual MPs and Ministers during the closed aspect of Parliament. Inevitably all of the four Sussex MPs that are Ministers have been asked to respond to questions from other MPs. Although they have not received significant numbers of questions, all four of them have responded in their current roles. However most of the other Sussex MPs did not ask any questions on behalf of their own concerns or on behalf of their local people throughout the last six weeks.

There have merely been three Sussex MPs who have taken the time to ask questions since Parliament closed towards the end of July. Henry Smith, the Crawley MP asked one question which he raised back towards the end of July. His question was “what provision the 10 Year Cancer Plan will make for expanding system infrastructure to deliver radioligand therapy and other innovative cancer treatment.” As it happened this was the same question that was raised by a Liberal Democratic MP a few days earlier and so the answer he received was for him to read the previous answer and sadly that was very poor quality. The other two local MPs who have asked questions have both done so on several occasions. The MP for Wealden, Nusrat Ghani asked two questions that related to people that are being supported by our nation and she also asked a question that related to her previous rejection as a Minister by the current Prime Minister. The first question was how many of our government team are focusing on the Visas that are being supplied for the Ukraine people. A couple of weeks later she asked a question that related to the provision for the Afghanistan refugees in our Nation. It is very encouraging that she has called for support for both of those people. Her personal question was answered with an indication that the new Prime Minister will consider the way she was treated in the past.  

The third MP who asked questions is Caroline Lucas from Brighton Pavilion who raised many more questions. She asked Twelve questions which covered a range of issues, several of which were focused by several questions. The theme that included the most questions was at the end of July when she raised four questions about how the Rwanda situation was being dealt with. Sadly, the answer did not cover very much information. The second broad theme that she has raised was a focus on the HM Passport Office issues. She raised two questions at the end of July and another in the second week of August. Some of these questions did get acceptable answers but not all of them. The third theme she raised was two questions on the subject of the Higher Education and these did get an extensive answer from the Minister. The other questions were the funding for Fire and Rescue services following Grenfell Tower event, the Coal Authority theme as part of international climate treaties and Food Labelling for people with eating disorders. Caroline Lucas was clearly working through the Government during the Summer unlike most other Sussex MPs and she should be acknowledged for this work along with what each of the MPs did in their constituencies.