It was back on Thursday the 21st March in Parliament the Conservative, Lord President of the Council, Penny Mordaunt and MP for Portsmouth North, planned on Monday last week 15^th April to organise the “Consideration of a Lords message to the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, followed by debate on a motion on hospice funding. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.” On Monday last week six votes connected to the “Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill” were all agreed by the Conservative and the DUPs agreed with five of them. All of the Sussex Conservatives voted for them and Caroline Lucas from Green and Peter Kyle and Lloyd Russell-Moyle from Labour voted against them. This debate was due to be followed by a debate on a motion on hospice funding. “Debate on a motion on hospice funding” being organised by Sally-Ann Hart for Hastings and Rye and Peter Gibson Conservative MP for Darlington but very sadly it did not get discussed and currently there are no indications of when this will happen again.

Last Tuesday a second reading on a Bill relating to the Tobacco and Vapes Bill took place followed by a vote which has been widely reported in the press. The Bill was approved by most Conservatives, Labour, SNP, Liberal Democrat and Plaid Cymru MPs which created 379 votes with 65 oppositions which were most Conservatives and the DUP MP’s.  However, in Sussex there were no votes from Huw Merriman and Andrew Griffith who are members of the Government and no votes from Caroline Lucas, Peter Kyle and Russell-Moyle. A significant time of discussion took place about the Tobacco and Vapes Bill before the voting took place and toward of the end of that debate Tim Loughton contributed with these comments

“If I had known that my right hon. Friend was such a keen smoker, I would not have recruited her to the Conservative party at the tender age of 18 when we were at university. I have always taken a free-choice approach to health matters, and as shadow Children’s Minister I had to lead on both the tobacco advertising ban and the public smoking ban. We were wrong to oppose them. Who would now think it remotely normal for people to be able to smoke around us in restaurants and other public places? Does my right hon. Friend not agree that in a few years’ time this measure will seem just the same as banning smoking in public places, and people will ask why we did not do it earlier?”

Last Tuesday Jo Gideon the Conservative MP for Stoke on Trent who organised the “General Debate: Food waste and food redistribution” which includes the FareShare charity a food distribution group that was set up in London in 1990 and expanded across Surrey and Sussex opening up in Brighton in 2002. Jo Gideon began with “I beg to move, that this House has considered food waste and food distribution.” And after several comments she then refers with

“I could not speak on this topic without raising the excellent work of FareShare, the UK’s largest food redistribution charity, which takes edible surplus food from more than 500 businesses and redistributes it to people in need through a UK-wide network of almost 11,000 frontline charities. One in four of the charities with which FareShare works say that if it were not for that supply, they could not keep up with demand to support the people who use their services.”

There were no Sussex MPs that spoke in the debate last week but a year ago when Nick Gibb was a Government minister when he spoke to support

“Alongside the national programme, there are several organisations such as FareShare, Magic Breakfast, Kellogg’s and Greggs providing valuable support to schools with a breakfast provision.”

The only other details released so far for debate this week which involve Sussex MPs are two Committees planned to take place on Tuesday. They are the Education Committee which includes Caroline Ansell, the Eastbourne MP taking the subject “Disabled students’ allowance”. The other group is the Defence Committee with Jeremy Quin as Chair the Horsham MP but the Committee is described as “Private Meeting” meaning a more informal committee meeting.

This afternoon in Parliament an “e-petition 640062 relating to Carer’s Allowance” is organised by Christina Rees the Labour MP for Neath, South Wales. The petition is entitled “Increase Carer’s Allowance to 35 hours a week at the minimum wage” The first words are “We want the Government to increase the amount of Carer’s Allowance to match pay for a full-time job.” It was published by Alasdair Adam although it has not had large numbers of signatures. The total list is 13,914 with less than 300 signatures in Sussex. The largest areas are Bognor Regis and Littlehampton in West Sussex, Brighton Kemptown in Brighton and Hove and Hastings and Rye in East Sussex. This is a very important matter which deserves the Governments direct support.

It emerged at the end of the recent Parliament closure that MP Tim Loughton has made it clear that he “After much reflection I have decided now is the right time for me to move on and hand over to someone new”. Henry Smith is resigning at the next Election and also Caroline Lucas so it will be interesting to see how they development.