Jess Phillips MP: speeches

Speeches

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I am not going to, because Madam Deputy Speaker has been clear. The idea that if we do not pass the Bill today, we are going to walk out of here and women in our country will be any safer is an absolute myth. Doing nothing is not the same as acting.

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  Suicide currently outstrips homicide as the main reason for the deaths of women in cases of domestic abuse and coercive control, so what the right hon. Gentleman outlines is currently happening. Arguing for the status quo is not something I feel comfortable with. I feel considerably stronger about the safeguards that I worked with my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) to ensure that the Bill had.

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Claire Hazelgrove). Mainly because I am a bit lazy, I rarely prepare to speak in debates, and never have copious notes. Her remarks have led where my remarks will go. I will cover the issue of coercion, which hon. Members have mentioned, and, like her, will talk about my mother, who also died when she was 61 years old, unfortunately when I was much younger than my hon. Friend. My mother died when I was 28 years old—many years ago now. My mother had a leiomyosarcoma, and suffered with it for around three years. The prognosis did change—I hear the arguments that some hon. Members are making—but towards the end of her life, at one point she felt she was going to die. It was coming to the end. She was in a wheelchair. She was completely paralysed. She was doubly incontinent by this point. To give hon. Members an idea of the kind of woman my mother was, she was an absolute titan. She was like Erin Brockovich, but with a bad perm, in the 1980s. She could lay claim to being able to spot talent, because she gave a job to the current Prime Minister, who worked for her for some time. He is often teary-eyed when I talk to him about her. My brothers live in different parts of the world and country, but I live 20 minutes from where I was born and where my mother lived. When she got to this stage, we all went back to be with her, because we believed that this was it—that she was going to be taken, that she was going to die. She did not die on that occasion, so my brother, who lives in France, went back home. Then, when it came to the point that a doctor made the call and said, “Your mom is about to die,” my brother could not come back—this was about four weeks later. So it was me who was with my mom when she died—not all of her children, and not all of her grandchildren. I am eternally grateful that I was there. This was a woman who had written every part of her funeral. She knew exactly what she wanted us to feel. She had planned, to the nth degree, what would happen after she was gone. The other day, I found a recipe for Christmas puddings and the PIN for her credit card—she was like, “Your dad might not be able to get money.” My mom had thought about everything, but she was not gifted with the ability to think about this. She would have taken the choice on that day, when my brothers were surrounding her. She did not die in terrible pain—I recognise what my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) is saying. She was not writhing. It was not awful. However, she should have been able to choose to have her family with her. I will vote for this Bill. I went to women’s liberation playgroup, which she set up with a load of women. She raised me to believe in a right to choose—my gosh, more than anything else in life. She would tell me what to do today. Many people have mentioned coercion. I am a scholar of coercion, and I say this to everybody today: do not rest on your laurels thinking that, if we do nothing, people today will not be coerced to death. That will literally happen today. The idea that if we just do nothing—

• 10 Sept 2026 · Social Housing Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  It is very good to hear the Minister commit to checking whether guidance is enough. Many of us who have tried to rehouse victims of domestic abuse, even after great laws have been written into legislation in this place, will know that getting them the priority need status under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 still takes a huge amount of advocacy. I therefore really welcome the commitment that, if guidance alone does not work, the Government will look at legislation. I offer to work with the Department to ensure that we assess whether the policy is working not from Whitehall but from the frontline.

• 10 Sept 2026 · Social Housing Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I am not right honourable, although I am right. [ Laughter. ]

• 10 Sept 2026 · Social Housing Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  As somebody who, I would wager, has rehoused more victims of domestic abuse than almost anybody in this House, I just want to say on behalf of victims of domestic abuse that building more council housing and ensuring that more council housing is in the system is literally the thing that almost every victim in the country would ask us to do. With that, I commend the ideology of the Bill and suggest on the hon. Gentleman’s point about “wedging it together” that they are the same issue.

• 8 Sept 2026 · Online Safety · Hansard source

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  This statement and the previous one are about the two things that I have previously resigned over, so I feel that my moral compass is back. [Laughter. ] First and foremost, I want to help out my right hon. Friend. To those who are concerned about the timeliness of this statement, let me say that the original statement may have had a timeframe in it, and I found in my negotiations with her that that was not quick enough. Actually, “as soon as possible” is quicker than what was going to be suggested, so I have every faith that she will do this quickly. I want to stress the importance of the “take” element; there is no privacy issue if we just stop children taking images in the first place—the image will not exist to be able to go anywhere. But the take is the thing that the tech companies, for some reason, are faltering on. It is the most important thing to stop children being abused and groomed. Addressing that element will move the market away from our children here in the UK; they will not be able to use their phones for that terrible market of sexual abuse any more than they will be able to use them to make toast, because that will not be what they are for. When we remove the UK market, though, we will send the market somewhere else in the world. I therefore ask the Secretary of State to work with partners across the world to ensure that while we lead the world, we are not standing alone for too long.

• 13 Jul 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?