Today and tomorrow are the last two days when MPs can participate in matters of Government. Tuesday 26th of March is the final day until April 15th Our local MPs will be able to work in Sussex for some of this three and a half weeks period.

Today a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee which includes Jeremy Quin relating to “Value for Money from Legal Aid”. Tomorrow morning there is an Education Committee with Caroline Ansell about “Children’s social care”. In the afternoon there is the Liaison Committee (Commons) including “Work of the Prime Minister” with Jeremy. There is also the Defence Committee which includes Jeremy who is the Chair of that group. The group refers to “One-off session with the Secretary of State for Defence” 

Taking place today is a debate about “e-petition 206851 relating to a public inquiry into the James Bulger murder case” organised by George Howarth the Liverpool MP for Knowsley.  The petition explained “We want a Public Inquiry into the James Bulger murder case.” This was established from 11 January 2018 to 11 July 2018, achieving 213,624 signatures. It is clear that most of the signatures were created in the Liverpool area and indeed the most signatures? is from Knowsley whose group had just over 8,000 signatures. Here in Sussex the total signatures on all of our 16 areas were less than 2,900 for the whole of our region. The most significant locations are Crawley, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton and Eastbourne.

Last week in Parliament there was a e-petition introduced by the Conservative MP from South London, Elliot Colburn who organised the event with debate for two “e-petitions 630932 published by Fares Rahmani and 631529 published by Dan McCarthy relating to LGBT content in relationships education”. Of note one of the Sussex MPs made a contribution as previously none of the Sussex MPs have contributed to any petition items for many months. Lloyd Russell-Moyle from Brighton Kemptown spoke five times during the session with many other MPs endorsing his contributions. The debate relating to the petition focussed around education in particular the age children and young people at school engage with information about relationships.

I rise to support the second petition, but it is important that we recognise the concerns of those who signed the first petition. I hope those concerns can be allayed.

I think that children in lower primary school—infant school—generally should not be divided very much by sex at all. At that age, they should be taught, “Actually, you can be anything you want. You can play with any of the toys you want. You can do all of the sports activities that you want.” We should have almost no gender-specific activities or separation at that age, and I think that it is a great shame that we now see adverts for Lego that are gendered, whereas only 30 years ago they would have no gender attached to them. I think that we have gone backwards in many respects for infant and lower-primary-school age groups’ 

There were plans for Friday the 15th March intended to involve two Sussex MPs. One was the proposal of the Sally-Ann Hart document “Support for Infants and Parents etc (Information) Bill” although she did discuss the “Animal Welfare (Import of Dogs, Cats and Ferrets) Bill” organised by Selaine Saxby, the MP for North Devon, tragically Sally-Ann’s own item did not get included on that day and there has no indication of when it will take place. Previously an indication that the document from Lloyd Russell-Moyle which is “Conversion Practices (Prohibition) Bill” discussed on 1st March and planned to repeat it on 15th March was not included. It was promised for Friday 22nd March.

Last Monday, a discussion from most MPs in the House of Lords were responding to a proposed Bill three weeks ago on the theme of “Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill”. There were votes last Monday for the 10 discussions established by the House of Lords but which the Government rejected. However, there were attempts by most of the other MPs to support the Lord votes. In Sussex Caroline Lucas and Lloyd both voted to assist the Lords. Most of the other Sussex MPs voted for the Government to close down the Bill. Huw Merriman and Nusrat Ghani both ignored one of 10 items even though they are Government Ministers. Sadly, Peter Kyle from Hove did not vote at all. Only one of the Sussex MPs spoke in the session before the votes and that was Caroline Lucas and her final comment included these words

I sum up with a message that I hope that peers in the other place will consider. It is, of course, right and fundamental that the House of Lords should act in accordance with its subordinate position in relation to this elected House of Commons—that is the usual way in which we proceed. For the other place to override the Commons, the bar must be an extraordinary and profound attack on the very fabric and operation of our constitutional democracy. I regret to conclude that this Bill is just that and so the other place would be well within its rights—indeed, this is its responsibility—to uphold the amendments it has already put in place. This Bill is demeaning and degrades both Houses by ignoring the rule of laws that we have passed.