Last Thursday was the closure of Parliament for our MPs that are outside of Government with the plan to reopen on Monday 4th September in six weeks’ time. Occasionally unforeseen events occur in the Summer and the Government calls for MPs to revisit Parliament but that is very rare. However, there are chances for all non-governmental MPs to submit written questions to the Government over the next period and it will be interesting to observe if our local MPs will take up those opportunities over the next few weeks. There will also be some Committee’s that will take place during the Summer. It will be fascinating to review how MPs have contributed in the last few months to Early Day Motions and how Parliament has responded to the public e-petitions that have taken place. I will be interested if during the next six weeks any of our MP’s will respond to the current e-petitions or engage with public events, charities and businesses that could be promoted in Parliament after September.

Last Monday a significant event that took place in Parliament was a debate focused on a public e-petition which was identified by the Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi who is from Gower in South Wales. The event was entitled “Teaching Assistant Pay” and the petition was stated as “Recognise Teaching Assistants as an important asset to schools by raising wage.” There was one Sussex MP who took part in the event although Nick Gibb who is the MP for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton is also a Minister of Education so he was responding for the Government. Clearly it would have been encouraging if one or more of our local MPs would have taken part in the event because the debate was very significant. The opening comment from Nick Gibb was

I congratulate Tonia Antoniazzi on her well informed and passionate speech opening this debate on the petition relating to pay for teaching assistants. I would like to start by saying that the Government recognise teaching assistants as a valuable part of the school workforce. We appreciate the dedication of our teaching assistants and know the valuable contribution that they make, alongside excellent teachers, to pupils’ education.

At the end of the discussion Tonia stated

I will keep my comments brief. I believe that there is a need for reform: our teaching assistants deserve better, and there should be a real focus on recruitment and retention. I appreciate that I am from Wales, but the issues are similar across the United Kingdom, so we should all stand together, work together, and look to improve recruitment and retention, and pay, for those who play a vital role in our schools.

Let us hope that the Government will listen to what Tonia stated and also the support from the 88,000 petition members which included nearly 3,000 people from Sussex. I am curious to see if any of our local MPs make comments in the future.

Along with that event that took place last week there were a number of other proactive discussions. On Monday there was a debate on the headline of Illegal Migration Bill and after its exchange there were nine voting sessions for clauses in that Bill. It is fascinating that there are at least 60 clauses within that Bill and only seven were debated and voted for in the voting process last week all of which were approved by the Government that week. However, it was very interesting that several Conservative MPs did not approve the Government clauses and some of them voted against the Government along with the other political groups in the event. Here in Sussex the two Conservative MPs that rejected the Government were Peter Bottomley from Worthing West and Tim Loughton from East Worthing and Shoreham. They endorsed five of the sessions but they ignored one of them and they voted against three of the them. There were also a number of other Conservative MPs who rejected one of the other clauses. Inevitably the Sussex Labours and Green MP voted against all nine of the votes but sadly all of them were approved by the Government.

There were two Sussex MPs that spoke in the debate who were Tim Loughton and Caroline Lucas from Brighton Pavilion who included at the end

So any Member who votes to block the Lords amendments should admit that in doing so, they degrade the rule of law, dehumanise vulnerable refugees, attack our modern slavery laws, put LGBT refugees at grave risk, and that their approach will lead to the unconscionable mass detention and treatment of children, with no stated time limit to that detention—it is sickening.

Last Wednesday there was a session called the “All-party Parliamentary Groups” that included two Sussex MPs. They were Peter Bottomley and Tim Loughton that both commented at least 14 statements. One comment from Peter included this text

My hon. Friend Tim Loughton and I, and anybody else who wants to, will come in to have a roundtable and solve the problems. I believe in controlling foreign Government and big commercial interests; I do not believe in wrecking the purposes of all-party groups. Most of those I am involved in have no foreign Government or big commercial interests.

That was a compelling statement. I wait with interest to find out what these MPs will want to contribute in the next period of Parliament from September.