Jess Phillips MP: speeches

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Speeches

25 Nov 2024 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source
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A number of different risk assessment tools are used, whether DARA or Dash—the domestic abuse, stalking, harassment and honour-based violence risk assessment—which has a more historical grounding and is used more widely. I want the hon. Lady to know that it is impossible to read any domestic homicide review in our country for the past decade and not think that risk assessments, and how well they are used and operating, is something that we should look at.
25 Nov 2024 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source
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As it is very local to me, I take a particular interest in the Sandycroft centre. Such centres are invaluable to vulnerable women, and I would be delighted to visit him and Lee—it would be a 15-minute drive.
25 Nov 2024 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source
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A massive thank you to Aylesbury Women’s Aid for the amazing work that it is clearly doing. I am afraid that my hon. Friend and victims are exactly right in their assessment. That is why we must have a completely cross-Government approach to ensuring that no matter where a victim stands up, all services take responsibility for their role in the lives of those who are suffering.
13 Nov 2024 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source
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It is indeed totally unacceptable, and it is, I am afraid, a legacy of a totally failed justice system. We know that owing to the complexity of the system, rape victims are often left to wait disproportionately longer than others who are already waiting too long. In our manifesto we committed ourselves to fast-tracking rape cases. We are carefully considering the best way to do that, along with colleagues at the Ministry of Justice who lead on this work, and we will announce our plans in due course.
13 Nov 2024 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source
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Having done that work myself, I am more than happy to champion and praise the work of IDVAs and ISVAs. As my hon. Friend might imagine, we will use every tool available to us, including those vital roles, to target perpetrators and address the root causes of abuse and violence.
13 Nov 2024 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source
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The Government are absolutely committed to tackling misogyny, both before it starts and when it exists. Hate crime reviews are being undertaken, and I am more than happy to meet the hon. Lady. I have met her many times to discuss this subject.
13 Nov 2024 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source
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I thank my hon. Friend for question. The first march was in 1977 and, frankly, progress has been too slow if we still need to march. We will use a cross-Government, transformative approach to halve violence against women and girls, and that will be underpinned by a new violence against women and girls strategy, to be published next year. That will include drastically improving the police and criminal justice response. Prevention and education are also absolutely fundamental to our approach, and we will work across key Departments, including the Department for Education, to tackle the root causes of these crimes.
13 Nov 2024 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source
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This Government are committed to using all the levers at our disposal to deliver our mission to halve violence against women and girls. We have already announced our intention to embed specialist domestic abuse advisers in 999 control rooms, launched pilots for the new domestic abuse protection orders, and implemented a duty on employers to anticipate occasions when sexual harassment may occur and take responsible steps to prevent it.
13 Nov 2024 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source
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I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman, and I remember his valiant efforts during the passage of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. The Government have committed to ensuring that local connection does not apply in cases such as those he talks about. With regard to benefits, the Department for Work and Pensions is very much part of the mission group on violence against women and girls, and I will absolutely raise his points. We will seek to make sure that when and wherever people crop up with these issues, their local authorities and local systems are in place.
13 Nov 2024 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source
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I have spoken to the Chief Constable of the PSNI within the last week, and he has requested that we go over to Northern Ireland. That trip is planned for early in the new year, and I would very much welcome working with colleagues in this House and the devolved Government to make sure that we are all working together on this issue.
13 Nov 2024 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source
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The simple answer is yes, I do agree. As somebody who has written and delivered such programmes in schools, I know that brilliant work is going on across the country in local authorities, multi-academy trusts and more widely, with voluntary sector organisations doing a lot of the work. I would be glad to explore with officials the best way to learn from those who work with children and young people, because we have to work out what will work in our schools and then make sure that we put it out everywhere.
13 Nov 2024 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source
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I would like to say very clearly from the Dispatch Box that it is a total myth that people cannot access mental health support when awaiting trial. It is something that has crept in over the years, and I would like it to be stamped out for good across all agencies. I ran a rape crisis service that definitely served people who were awaiting trial. If I were the Member of Parliament representing the hon. Gentleman’s constituent, I would push back on that assertion and say that it is certainly not the policy.
13 Nov 2024 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source
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I could not agree more with the hon. Lady, as she might imagine, considering the seat that I represent. We need a strong “by and for” service in our country. We need to ensure that the geographical location of someone in the country does not matter, and that specialist services are available for black and minority ethnic women and other marginalised groups—for example, disabled victims of domestic abuse or victims of domestic abuse in the armed forces. There needs to be a specialist approach for specialist groups and we will be making sure that that is part of our violence against women and girls strategy.
21 Oct 2024 · Policing · Hansard source
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As it falls to me to answer this, let me say that the right hon. Gentleman knows fine well that operational decisions for policing fall to the police, in this situation and in every other. I would certainly welcome it if Taylor Swift’s mother stood for the leadership of the Conservative party; she would really offer something that is not currently available. The substantive question was about confidence. The confidence of women in policing, and its ability to keep women in our country secure, dived under the previous Government, so confidence definitely needs to be restored.
21 Oct 2024 · Policing · Hansard source
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Restoring confidence in policing is one of the core aims of the Government’s safer streets mission. That means ensuring robust responses to the crimes that devastate lives and corrode our communities. We are also committed to improving police standards, and will announce steps to strengthen the police misconduct and vetting system shortly.
21 Oct 2024 · Policing · Hansard source
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I could not agree more that we need to strengthen this area, with women especially feeling less confidence over the last few years. We will announce in due course—I promise the hon. Lady that we are working on this at pace—how we are going to ensure that police conduct and vetting systems are fit for purpose, to bring back some of the trust that has been lost.
21 Oct 2024 · Policing · Hansard source
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As the Home Secretary laid out, extra neighbourhood policing is important not just because we need more police on our streets, but because when our constituents—shop workers and those who own businesses—call the police, if they get no response confidence drops. The neighbourhood police that there will be across the country, including in Cornwall, will help with confidence, not just with crime.
21 Oct 2024 · Policing · Hansard source
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As the Home Secretary outlined on neighbourhood policing, we will bring in respect orders to ensure that antisocial behaviour in particular areas is targeted in a way that it simply has not been in recent years.
21 Oct 2024 · Policing · Hansard source
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I thank my hon. Friend and as a local to Warwickshire I take a keen interest in those matters myself. Of course, I will meet him, along with the Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson). It is vital that the public can trust that those who police us, and who are in charge of our police, are held to account as everybody else should be.
21 Oct 2024 · Policing · Hansard source
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I remind the right hon. Gentleman and the House that concerts were cancelled in Vienna because of a terror threat that the CIA identified could harm tens of thousands of people. I sat in this very Chamber last week in front of Figen Murray—the mother of Martyn, who was killed at an event in Manchester. The idea that we should not take that security seriously is, I am afraid, something that I simply do not agree with.
21 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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Let me make it clear that the new Government intend very swiftly to set up new taskforces to ensure that across Departments—in this case, with our counterparts in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology—we do everything we can to end the scourge of online child abuse, and child abuse not online.
21 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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We are absolutely looking at how we can strengthen stalking protection orders. We will look at our stalking laws in the round, but also at how policing handles all cases of violence against women and girls and at the training that will be needed.
23 Jul 2024 · Commercial Sexual Exploitation · Hansard source
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I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for securing this debate, which, as she pointed out, is my first as a Home Office Minister—although definitely not my first on this subject, by any stretch of the imagination. From the outset, let me say that it is a privilege to have been asked by the Prime Minister to serve, and to work on some of the issues to which I have devoted much of my life both inside and outside this building. We have an enormous task on our hands. Debates such as this underline why it is so critical that we make real progress in protecting women—and in this instance, men as well, and all people—from harm. We know that sexual exploitation disproportionately affects women and girls. As I said, it affects men as well, although those who are buying sex tend always to come from the same group. It is time that we treat tackling violence against women and girls as the national emergency that it is. New Government policies will be announced in due course, but I want to restate that I believe passionately that change in this area is needed and, until it is achieved, we must not rest. On hearing accounts such as those we have heard tonight from my hon. Friend, I am not sure how we could come to any other conclusion. I will continue to work closely with charities and non-governmental organisations—I have met almost all those mentioned by my hon. Friend—to support services in advancing their efforts to protect survivors and hold perpetrators to account. Turning to the specific points of the debate, this Government will use every lever available to stop commercial sexual exploitation, and all kinds of sexual exploitation. We are committed to tackling the harms that it brings. The most vulnerable in our society deserve nothing less. When looking at commercial sexual exploitation, it is undeniable that we have to consider carefully those who are exploited under the guise of completely legitimate prostitution. That is often the argument that comes back, but not one that we should recognise. We are only a couple of weeks into the new Government, so I hope that Members will understand that I am not in a position today to make commitments on specific policies. However, I want to make it clear to my hon. Friend and all Members that they will be coming, and she has my word that I expect change in this space. Currently, the acts of buying and selling sex are not in themselves illegal in England and Wales. However, some activities that can be associated with prostitution are offences, including activities linked to exploitation, which she talked about. The Sexual Offences Act 2003 makes it illegal to pay for the sexual services of a prostitute subjected to force, threats or any other form of coercion or deception. This is a strict liability offence, meaning that it is not a valid defence that the defendant did not know that the person was being exploited or had been subject to force or coercion. As my hon. Friend pointed out, I have very grave concerns about how well this works in practice—I am happy to say from here that it does not. Like so many convictions that we seek for crimes of violence against women and girls, the numbers are woeful. We want to understand the scale of the issue and how best to respond to it. The Home Office is currently providing £1.36 million of funding to Changing Lives—I declare that I was the chair of the Changing Lives adult sexual exploitation partnership, though I am no longer—to address the current gaps in evidence of the levels and types of online abuse and exploitation, to help us better understand the pathways that are needed to improve support. This is important work and I thank the amazing Changing Lives for undertaking it. We are also providing £378,000 of funding over two years to Trevi Women, which provides trauma-informed support to women survivors wishing to exit on-street prostitution. We are aware of the different legislative approaches to prostitution, such as those implemented in Northern Ireland and different parts of Europe. There is a wide range of potential legislative approaches. Further work is needed to understand the options we will have as a Government. I will work with the NGOs and charities to explore those options, ensuring that the protection of women and girls from exploitation is at the forefront of our approach. The trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation is a horrific crime, and we are determined to safeguard victims and to bring ruthless perpetrators of this crime to justice. That means ensuring that the police relentlessly pursue perpetrators who pose the greatest risk to women and girls, using all the tools at our disposal to protect victims and get dangerous perpetrators off our streets. As I am sure hon. Members are aware, sexual exploitation is a significant part of the trafficking space in this country. We will build on the Online Safety Act 2023 to ensure that online companies fulfil their duty to eradicate this exploitation from their sites. There is much work to do in this particular space, as has been highlighted by my hon. Friend. I have had many cases where this has not been handled well at all. Indeed, there are images of me on pornographic websites that I cannot get taken down. We will use every lever to halve violence against women and girls in the next decade in the Home Office and across the whole of Government, with policing and other experts. The demand for commercial sexual services fuels the exploitation of women who are forced or coerced into prostitution. The use of commercial sexual services should not be normalised. We will look across Government to use all the levers available to change attitudes in the longer term, reducing demand for commercial sexual services and protecting women from exploitation. We hope to see huge advances on the issue of sex for rent. I tip my hat to the now Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hove and Portslade (Peter Kyle)—

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