As I write this column I am juggling with a surge of queries by email and Facebook about everything from rescuing constituents on a cruise ship in Australia to how many times they can walk their dog to whether a window fitter is deemed to be an essential occupation. So, my first request is please be patient and please check on my website for all the up to date advice which I am posting there daily. I had a daily tele-conference briefing with ministers earlier and I am posting all the detail which came out of that on my website and raised many more questions where a fuller answer will be forthcoming later.
All my staff have been sent away from Westminster to work from home and are doing so from dawn to dusk leaving me in splendid isolation in my office in the Commons to try to tackle as many questions as possible. We are still scrutinising the Coronavirus Bill emergency legislation before hopefully being released to get back to our constituencies for the rest of this week and the foreseeable future. I am not running face to face surgeries at the moment and held my last street surgery in Lancing on Saturday but if constituents need to talk to me they are asked to email me directly or leave a message with the Shoreham office on 01273 757182 and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
The way that the community has come forward with some fantastic volunteering schemes usually through local Facebook schemes has been hugely impressive and humbling. But why should we be surprised? The response across the constituency to the Shoreham Air Show tragedy was incredible and we know how to do it, albeit on a much larger scale now.
I was really grateful for the help with the ‘Shopital’ scheme which we set up at the weekend to help NHS staff at Worthing Hospital get hold of essential food supplies. I had heard heart-breaking tales of staff working long hard days and coming off shift at 8pm to find the supermarket shelves stripped. Thanks to a very positive manager at Sainsburys’ Lyons Farm we were able to assemble supplies of around 40 essential items including fruit and beg and most crucially loo paper.
On our first night we served over 100 grateful nurses, ambulance crew and doctors helped by very generous donations from Truffles with their surplus bread, the Amsterdam Pub with their unused vegetables and Southwick resident Mel Humphreys who rekindled he Air-show community spirit and provided ‘Thank You’ cakes and flapjacks. The thing that struck me most was the restraint of the staff who were reluctant to take any more than they needed and opted for half a dozen potatoes for example rather than the whole bag we were happy to sell them. What a contrast with the rather less community mind shoppers who have shopped excessively and stripped shelves regardless of the fact that they may be relying on those very same hospital staff to keep them alive next week.
Thank you to everyone for everything you are doing. Please keep safe and follow the expert advice.