(This piece was published in the Brighton Argus today – 30th October 2023) This week marks the second week of Parliament opening after all of the Party conferences have finished. There was a noticeable reduction in the amount of published information available about planned Government activity for the week ahead and some significant and unusual patterns of voting behaviour by the MP’s focussed around two particular Bills.

On Tuesday there were two clauses for the “Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill” with Government endorsing both and Labour and several other political parties opposing. However, the Sussex Conservative MPs Peter Bottomley, Tim Loughton, Ministers Nick Gibb, Andrew Griffith and Labour Hove MP Peter Kyle did not vote for either of them. On Wednesday there were seven clauses set out for two bills, the “Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill” and the “Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill”.  The Sussex MPs that did not vote were Nick Gibb, Andrew Griffith and Tim Loughton. Henry Smith ignored two of the seven clauses and Sally-Ann Hart ignored one of the clauses.

In the previous week a total of nineteen items requiring a vote of which seventeen related to the “Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill” including Clauses all of which were endorsed by the Government and which were opposed by Labour apart from two items which were “Power to replace Health and Safety Executive as building safety regulator” and “Planning application fees”.  The two groups that challenged those two clauses were the Liberal Democrats and Caroline Lucas the MP for Brighton Pavilion. There was one other a single clause for a Bill entitled “Energy Bill [Lords]” that Government supported but which was rejected by Labour and other groups. The other proposed Bill was “Devolution (Employment) (Scotland)” organised by the SNP and which was primarily disregarded by both the Conservative and Labour.

Most of the Sussex Conservative MPs and one of the Labour MPs voted in favour of both Bills. However, two Sussex MPs Nusrat Ghani the MP for Wealden, a government minister, and Peter Kyle the Labour MP for Hove, did not vote. Huw Merriman, the Bexhill and Battle MP and government minister only voted for the single “Energy Bill [Lords]” in that week. Nick Gibb the MP Bognor Regis and Littlehampton voted for nearly all the Clauses within both Bills However, he ignored the “Clause 87 – National development management policies: meaning” which was significant. The other Sussex minister who agreed with some of the Clauses is Gillian Keegan the Chichester MP. She signed for nine out of nineteen but declined eight of them. She ignored all four of the “Clause 1 – Statement of levelling-up missions” and three others.  One other Sussex Conservative MP voted very differently. Peter Bottomly the Worthing West MP and the Father of the House did vote for twelve of the clauses but he ignored three of them and was even more radical to vote against two of the items. He was not the only Conservative to vote against the Government, there were not many, but he was the only one in Sussex. His vote against the Government was “Clause 1 – Statement of levelling-up missions” and “After Clause 70 – Local authorities to be allowed to meet virtually”.

Caroline Lucas voted against all of Government items for the “Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill” and did not vote on the “Energy Bill [Lords]” session. However, one very significant vote was connected to the document proposed by SNP. David Linden from the SNP stated at the beginning

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Scotland Act 1998 to grant legislative competence for employment matters to the Scottish Parliament.

Caroline Lucas was the only MP to vote in agreement with the motion. The proposal also obtained votes from eighteen SNP members, two Plaid Cymru MPs from Wales and previous Labour MPs, now called Independent, in Wales and two MPs from Northern Ireland that are linked to Labour. Interestingly it was rejected by 32 individual Conservative MPs, two of which from Sussex, Tim Loughton from East Worthing and Shoreham and Sally-Ann Hart from Hastings and Rye.

Along with the voting there were two Sussex MPs who participated about the “Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill” session. They were Peter Bottomley who stated

I congratulate the Minister on the way she presented the Government’s approach to these over 100 amendments— on heaven knows how many pages, if one tries to read through them. I also congratulate the Opposition spokesperson, Matthew Pennycook, on martialling the points and presenting them in a way that the House can understand. In particular, I join him in saying to the Government that Lord Crisp’s proposals have much that should be incorporated…The amendment addresses a whole series of issues that did not get as much attention as they should have done. When developers are able to convert office blocks into homes, some of those homes are, frankly, substandard.

Caroline Lucas stated

I very much agree with the point that the Father of the House has just made. Does he agree that healthy homes should incorporate the idea of green space and more equitable access to good-quality green space within reach of those homes, as set out in the Lord’s amendment? We know about the improvements to physical and mental health that can come as a result of access to green space.

It seems relevant to question the reasoning MP’s use for voting and it is fair that constituencies have an answer.