Operation Stack: MPs pushing case for 'crucial' funding

Ahead of the Conservative Party conference I interviewed the prime minister and put to him that residents in the South East felt slightly taken for granted by the Tories.

The party dominates the political landscape in Kent and Sussex - in fact in Kent every constituency is represented by a Conservative MP.

So, given that I asked, did they take support as a given and therefore when the M20 was turned into the biggest lorry park in Europe over the summer was the government complacent?

Mr Cameron denied that and said the home secretary Theresa May was working with her French counterparts to tackle the problems in Calais, which had such a knock-on effect in Kent.

He also told me that Operation Stack had not been in place since the end of August.

That may be the case and summer may now seem like a distant memory but the chaos in Kent this summer is not.

And today a delegation of a dozen Kent MPs, led by the Folkestone MP Damian Collins, met the Chancellor George Osborne to lobby him on the need for a long-term solution to Operation Stack.

Mr Collins told me afterwards that it was a positive meeting but he wasn't content to leave the issue there.

He also took the opportunity at Prime Minister's Questions to raise the issue with Mr Cameron.

The prime minister said he was aware of the impact it had on Kent and he would do all he could to alleviate that.

When I spoke to Damian Collins after he said he felt it was important to raise the issue at the most senior level of government to ensure that - while Stack may not have been in place for some time now - those at the top of government are left in no doubt that it is an issue which needs to be tackled in the long term.

He said Kent cannot be allowed to become a lorry park again.

Kent's MPs say they're hopeful they may hear some good news in the Autumn Statement on 25 November.

But, at a time when the chancellor still has to make serious cuts across Whitehall departments MPs know there is not a lot of spare money available.

They're determined to lobby as hard as they can in these crucial few weeks before the spending review to make their case for funding.