Today is the opening of Parliament following their Half Term break over the last week. Given the discussions that have taken place last week publicly concerning the behaviour of Boris Johnson it will be very interesting to see what MPs will state today and over the next few days. However, in the “TheyWorkForYou” document that lists the debate plans for each week, there is currently only one Sussex MP who is listed to participate in the discussions.

Sally-Ann Hart is the Hasting and Rye MP and on Thursday she due to be organising a debate setting that is entitled “World Ocean Day”. Only five references exist in Parliament under the phrase World Ocean Day. Four involved Conservative MPs or Ministers and one contribution from an independent member of the House of Lords. All of the comments have only been presented in the last two years and I am keen to see what Sally-Ann will introduce into Parliament this week.

There are no other Sussex contributions listed on the document for this week but Nicholas Fletcher, the MP for Don Valley is holding a debate this afternoon. It refers to a petition that was set out by a parent called Lee Fryatt who lost his son to suicide.  His petition was entitled as “Create statutory legal duty of care for students in Higher Education” which was set out in mid September last year and by the end of January there were only 14,000 signatures across the whole of the UK. In the following 6 weeks the petition obtained a total of 128,000 signatures. The opening comments for the petition was

No general statutory duty of care exists in Higher Education. Yet, a duty of care is owed to students, and the Government should legislate for this. Higher Education providers should know what their duty is. Students must know what they can expect. Parents expect their children to be safe at university.

It was very interesting that the majority of those who signed the petition did so in the north west of the UK. Including significant numbers in the Lake District that signed the petition with over 1,000 people for each of the constituents. Here in Sussex our contributions were not as large but across our region there were nearly 4,400 signatures so that is sufficient for our local MPs to take part in this debate. I hope all of the comments from the MPs who take part today will be insightful and it will be fantastic if some local MPs participate.    

Along with focusing on what will take place this week and given that there were no debates last week it is valuable to review themes that were discussed over the period from the Easter break for Parliament. One such theme is Early Day Motions which I have reflected on previously. The value of the process is to provide opportunities for MPs to introduce a range of ideas and challenges to the Government. Local MPs who are not members of the Government are all entitled to submit or endorse proposals as part of the Early Day Motions a process that was set out by Margaret Thatcher towards the end of her period as Prime Minister. Since the system was introduced in November 1989 there have been a total of 55,064 Early Day Motion documents and most MPs have signed some of them over time. Sadly, there are a few MPs who have never endorsed any and some of the Conservative MPs who have become MPs since 2010 have refused to do so in their working period. These include Rishi Sunak and Elizabeth Truss who are the only Prime Ministers who have not signed any. Our local MPs who have not signed any include two MPs who are not Ministers, Caroline Ansell from Eastbourne and Sally-Ann Hart from Hasting and Rye. It is also very disturbing that four MPs who are currently Ministers, Nusrat Ghani from Wealden, Andrew Griffith from Arundel and South Downs, Huw Merriman from Bexhill and Battle and Jeremy Quin have never signed any of the documents that they could have endorsed.  

Since Easter three of the Sussex MP’s have participated in the Early Day Motions. Only one of them has written any documents which is Caroline Lucas the MP for Brighton Pavilion. She wrote an article entitled “Anniversary of the Kinder Scout mass trespass” which included

“this trespass united the campaign for access to the countryside and eventually contributed to the establishment of the UK’s first national parks”

A total of 26 other MPs signed it after she published it including Lloyd Russell-Moyle the MP for Brighton Kemptown. More recently Caroline published “Wellbeing economy” which included the information

“That this House welcomes the call made by President Michael D Higgins of Ireland on 28 April 2023 at a reception for the Think-Tank for Action on Social Change to look beyond the current obsession with economic growth and rebalance economy, ecology and ethics”

Another 20 MPs signed that petition. Along with these two documents Caroline endorsed 36 other items since Easter. The MP for Worthing West, Peter Bottomley has endorsed 7 documents and Lloyd Russell-Moyle has signed 4 documents. It is a productive step for these three Sussex MPs to support some of the EDMs that are published in each period and for another MP to promote a compelling petition that seeks to care for students in Higher Education