This morning is the first day of Parliament following the nearly three-week break. According to ‘TheyWorkForYou’ Parliament will be open until the end of May when it closes for a further week. There are very few public listings in Parliament and the House of Lords during closure periods but some Parliament business that occurs during these periods is that of written questions with a few raised by Sussex MPs.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle in Brighton Kemptown asked three questions, “Department for Education: Sign Language: GCSE” both answered by Damian Hinds. His other question “Home Office: Asylum: Housing” was answered by Tom Pursglove. Caroline Ansell from Eastbourne asked two questions under the theme of “Adoption and Guardianship: Finance”, the Minister David Johnston provided both with a single published document but there was not an actual response for her. There was one question from Henry Smith from Crawley. Caroline Lucas from Brighton Pavilion asked several questions over two weeks. Her questions related to “Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office: Israel: Hamas”, two “Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office: Gaza: Food Supply” and one “Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office: Gaza: Israel” all of which were answered by Andrew Mitchell Minister of State Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Development and Africa. 

“To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, if he will seek legal advice on the potential implications for his policies of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Famine Review Committee’s report entitled Famine Review Committee: Gaza Strip, March 2024 – Conclusions and Recommendations, published on 18 March 2024.”

and the response

“The UK is also doing all it can to get as much food into Gaza as possible. We recently announced that more than 2,000 tonnes of UK-funded food aid are being distributed by the World Food Programme on the ground. This is our largest delivery of aid to Gaza in this crisis. This follows 750 tonnes of UK funded food aid arriving in Gaza in December, delivered through the World Food Programme and a second delivery of 315 tonnes in January. We and our partners are stepping up efforts to get aid in as quickly as possible by land, sea and air. Israel must take action to allow more aid into Gaza, including scaling up the Jordan corridor, opening a crossing in northern Gaza (Karni, Erez or a new crossing point), fully opening Ashdod Port for aid delivery and increasing screening capacity at Kerem Shalom and Nitzana to seven days a week and extended hours.”

On the 4th April Caroline asked a question about school nurses

“To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many full-time equivalent qualified school nurses are working in a public health-commissioned (a) school nursing service, (b) zero to 19 service and (c) five to 19 healthy child programme in each local authority area?”

The response from Andrew Stephenson the Assistant Whip, Minister of State for Department of Health and Social Care,

“Since April 2013, local authorities have held responsibility for commissioning public health services for school-aged children. These services may be commissioned from a range of providers both inside and outside of the National Health Service. NHS England publishes monthly workforce data which includes information on the number of school nurses directly employed by NHS trusts and other core NHS organisations in England. This data will not represent the total number of school nurses delivering local authority commissioned services, as it will excludes places where services are commissioned outside of the NHS. It is not possible to identify the specific service or programme that these staff are working within’’

There have been no indications that there will be any e-Petition items this week. However, at the end of this week there are plans for a total of 51 private Bills including 19 from Christopher Chope the Conservative MP for Christchurch in Dorset, 12 from Chris Stephens, the SNP MP for Glasgow South West and 2 from Owen Thompson, the SNP MP for Midlothian, South of Edinburgh. The other 18 Bills are from individual MPs.

Today in Parliament sees a very important discussion “Debate on a motion on hospice funding” organised by Sally-Ann Hart the MP for Hastings and Rye and Peter Gibson MP for Darlington, Yorkshire. In January this year an All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) published a report “Government funding for hospices” it states that

“on average, hospice services receive one-third of their overall funding from the Government via the NHS. However, the funding received hasn’t risen in line with increasing costs like energy bills and increases in staff pay to keep pace with NHS pay.”

The APPG report concludes that

“the way hospice services are commissioned in England is ‘not fit for purpose’ and funding often does not reflect the true cost of care.” 

The Government has been urged to take up the recommendations in the report.

On Wednesday another important debate in the Home Affairs Committee with Tim Loughton from East Worthing and Shoreham discussing “Violence and abuse towards retail workers”. Earlier this year a report found violent and abusive incidents against shop workers rose by 50% in 2022-23 and Helen Dickinson, chair of the British Retail Consortium, welcomed the announcement, saying “the voices of the three million people working in retail are finally being heard”. In Scotland assault or abuse of staff has been a specific offence since 2021.

I hope that Sussex MPs will make progress this Parliament