Jess Phillips MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  The shadow Home Secretary was away when I updated the House on the Government’s response to the independent national inquiry into child sexual abuse, and on the action that we are taking to investigate and tackle child grooming gangs across the country. As I have said many times, people up and down this country are understandably horrified by the appalling crimes committed by despicable grooming gangs. Children were subjected to the most unthinkable sexual violence. Frontline services, local authorities and elected politicians turned away or even blamed the children, rather than their rapists. I know this because I speak to victims week in, week out, and I have done so for decades. This Government are determined to get to the truth of both historical and current grooming gangs, to ensure that perpetrators are punished and to deliver justice and accountability for victims and survivors. That is why we are pressing ahead with the key recommendations of the independent inquiry, including the mandatory duty to report. Baroness Casey, who conducted a no-holds-barred review into grooming gangs’ offending in Rotherham, is currently overseeing a national audit of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse. The audit will identify what further work is needed. It is looking at the scale, nature and profile of group-based abuse, including the characteristics of offenders. It will conclude in the coming weeks, and I have already committed to publishing the findings. The Home Secretary and I have always been clear that the first priority in tackling this heinous offending is getting perpetrators behind bars, and getting justice for the victims and survivors. That is why all police forces in England and Wales have been asked to review historical grooming gangs investigations that were closed with no further action, and to pursue new lines of inquiry and reopen investigations where appropriate. We are also going further than ever before to support local areas to hold independent local inquiries, which can drive action and accountability at a local level. That is what inquiries in Telford, Manchester and Rotherham have delivered effectively, and that is the approach we would like to see rolled out elsewhere. In January, we said that we would support five local inquiries. We are moving ahead with that commitment, and we have confirmed that funding will be made available to Oldham council as part of this work. We are currently working with a range of experts to develop a best practice local inquiries framework, so that local areas that conduct inquiries do so in a way that actually delivers justice, accountability and truth, commanding the support of victims and survivors. Our focus is on delivering meaningful, tangible change for victims and survivors. That means delivering on the key recommendations of Professor Jay’s national inquiry, getting perpetrators behind bars and, most importantly of all, protecting children today.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  Of course I agree. I want the perpetrators to be held accountable. What I can say without any doubt is that, as local inquiries have told us, people have covered things up, whether asked to or not, for seemingly multicultural reasons. That cannot stand. That said, we will always follow the facts to ensure that we completely and utterly deal with it.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  That does not deserve a response—and I actually quite like the hon. Gentleman. I have spent my entire career helping— [ Interruption. ] I wonder how many victims of grooming gangs he has sat and held hands with in court, and for how many he has gone round to their house in the morning to get them out of bed to get them into a courtroom. There is no way that I would be part of any cover-up. I will do everything I can, under a Home Secretary who will do everything she can, to ensure that those who are responsible are held accountable.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend raises an important point. We often talk about historic cover-ups and failings, but we must also keep our eye on exactly where grooming is going on now and will take place in the future. She points out, completely rightly, that there is an ongoing grooming issue. Through the taskforce and work with various security departments, I have seen great examples of quite how focused police enforcement is on that. Do I think that social media companies could be doing more? The answer will always be yes.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  Absolutely, and I say with the voice of the victims I have worked with over the years and have spoken to even today that the fundamental that they want is that children who come forward today—to their teacher, their social worker or whoever it is—do not suffer as they did. Keeping our eye on making sure that people are held accountable for the past will deliver justice only if we also look at the now.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  What we have proposed is better because it is about acting now in areas where it is needed. We have already had a national inquiry, which took seven years and wrote a 200-page dossier on group-based sexual abuse— [Interruption.] There was a 200-page dossier specifically on that, and it took two years just to do that, and it made really good recommendations. I genuinely believe that the best thing for me to do is crack on with them.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  I will not answer the second point, which I think strays slightly from this urgent question, but what I will say is that I wonder if the hon. and learned Gentleman has read the 200-page document of the national inquiry into group-based child sexual abuse that already exists and has statutory powers. If he or anyone in the House has not read it, I encourage them to do that.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  Thank you.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  I absolutely do not expect it to do that. Baroness Casey is seeking to do an audit of the problem profiles around the country, looking at exactly where the data does or does not exist and where there are failings. It was intended to be a rapid audit. The framework for good local inquiries is being worked on by a series of experts, including Tom Crowther and Alexis Jay. Details of the fund that local authorities can apply to will also be published by the end of May.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  The grooming gangs taskforce will work with local police force areas. The whole point is that it works operationally with local police forces to ensure best practice. That has led to 1,100 more arrests for group-based child sexual abuse since the taskforce was set up. There is a huge amount of resource in that centre. I encourage local areas and local police forces always to be working with the taskforce.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  Yes. As was outlined in Professor Alexis Jay’s report, the need for an overreaching authority to ensure accountability across the child protection system was made very clear. As we roll out the new authority, we are consulting many experts on what exactly it needs to look like and ensuring that we get the very best possible. I am sick of hearing lessons learned in a serious case review about a child rape, a child rape gang or a child death. There needs to be genuine accountability and things need to change.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  I delight in the hon. Gentleman’s interest, and what I would say to every single Member of this House is that I will work with absolutely anybody to make this better. I am more than happy to meet him and talk about any level of co-operation, because if people are genuinely here to try to stop the grooming gangs in this country, I am genuinely here to help.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree. I remember working in a Rape Crisis centre when the Jimmy Savile scandal was revealed and it was like being hit by a tsunami—the phone lines lit up. As I said before Easter in response to the Jay inquiry, making sure that we have robust mental health support for children who are victims is really important. I also announced that the Home Office would double the amount of money it provides for adult historic rape victims, in recognition that we may bring more people forward and therefore need to improve access to support.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  As my hon. Friend points out, I have spoken to and worked with victims of crime for many years. What they want, fundamentally, is for the things that happened to them not to happen to children today. That is the change they wish to see more than anything—more than they want any sort of justice. Ensuring that the new authority does that, and that it is not just words on paper, will therefore be absolutely vital and will deliver that fundamental victims’ need. When we consult experts on the child protection authority, we will ensure that organisations such as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which has panels of specialist victims groups to assist its work, will be part of that.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  We have committed to five, but I expect to go further.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman. I wish to see people who covered this up held accountable within the law and the frameworks that exist. If people have concerns about things and would like to bring specific cases to me, the police have the power to investigate those things. Had mandatory reporting laws existed sooner, we might have been in a better situation, but I completely agree that it is appalling that no one has been held to account.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  I will wait for the review being undertaken by Baroness Casey and look at what it tells me, and then I will act on that.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  I want to be clear that local inquiries must be independent. The chair of Telford inquiry was independent, and Professor Alexis Jay chaired the Rotherham inquiry. They are independent inquiries and they are not run by local authorities.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  Absolutely. There are systemic problems with how women and girls are treated, and sometimes cover-ups are ignored. I am afraid to say that there is still a cultural sense of women feeling that they will not be believed if they come forward. We have to look fundamentally at all the systems across Government, which is what I and my colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), who is leading on the violence against women and girls strategy, will do.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  As I said, I will consider the situation as it unfolds. What I would say is with the amount of money that the Government are allocating for local inquiries— [ Interruption. ] From a sedentary position, the shadow Home Secretary said, “It’s not enough,” but it is millions more than the zero that the previous Government allocated. When Oldham and Telford wrote to the previous Government to ask for help, answer came there none. I will follow the leads that are left for me.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  I do not agree with that. Politically, the easiest thing for me to have done in this situation would have been to capitulate, but I do not think it is the right thing to do. I genuinely believe that from my years of work and speaking to the victims and working in Telford with those victims about what changed afterwards. I would not do it—I would not stand here if I did not believe it. And as for the idea that I am trying to protect something of myself, this process has, I have to say, not been protecting of me and, frankly, that is an absolutely disgraceful thing to say.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Child Rape Gangs · Hansard source

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  Once again, I praise the hon. Gentleman for raising this issue over a number of years; others have come to it more recently. We have a meeting in our diary, so I will make him an offer: I would very much like to meet the victims he is talking about. I will gladly sit down with them. I want the hon. Gentleman to know that he has my guarantee that, if in the work Baroness Casey is doing around problem profiling and police forces across the country local authorities are found to have problems, I will pursue them.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Tenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is absolutely fine, Sir Roger. Clauses 63 provides the police with the power to receive virtual notifications from registered sex offenders in specified circumstances. It was a direct recommendation from Chief Constable Mick Creedon’s independent review into the police-led management of registered sex offenders in the community, which the Home Office published in 2023. The police will be able to give permission to notify virtually only to offenders they deem suitable. The police will be able to revoke this permission at any time, and retain a power to compel the registered sex offender to attend a police station to notify. This change will make it easier and quicker for specified sex offenders to notify changes to the police, thereby improving efficiency. It will also reduce the likelihood of unintentional but unavoidable breaches of the notification requirements due to, for example, offenders being unable to travel to a police station before the statutory three-day time limit as a result of health or mobility issues. This measure will make it easier for offenders to comply with the requirements and will allow the police to manage any risks more efficiently. The measures will apply only where the police deem it safe and appropriate to notify virtually. If there is any risk that an offender is misusing the permission, the police have the power to revoke it and require that notification take place in person. The police can allow an offender to notify via a means that enables both parties to see and hear each other without being in the same place. In practice, that will mean that an offender must use, for example, video calling software—which we all got used to—to communicate with their offender manager, with both being visible and audible to each other. In the independent review of the police-led management of registered sex offenders in the community, Mick Creedon said: “I strongly recommend that discretion is incorporated into the notification requirement regime. Whilst the requirements might still be common at the point of conviction, the subsequent risk assessment and management plan should vary, allowing forces to assess which details to collect and how individuals should notify, affording opportunities for online or remote notification where appropriate.” Question put and agreed to. Clause 63 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 64 Review of indefinite notification requirements (England and Wales) Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Tenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The aim of clause 67 is to improve the process by which the police obtain warrants to enter and search registered sex offenders’ homes to assess their risk of sexual harm. Currently, under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, a superintendent is required to make an application to a court for a warrant in person. Setting the requirement at that level can cause delays to warrants being obtained. This measure will lower the rank of officer able to authorise an application to inspector and enable the application in court to be made by a constable. Allowing officers below the rank of superintendent to apply for and obtain such warrants will make the process more efficient, which will help improve the police’s management of offenders. It will bring the power of entry and search in line with other similar provisions, where lower-rank officers are able to apply for warrants. Finally, clause 68 and schedule 9 make minor and consequential amendments to the Sexual Offences Act 2003 as a result of the changes introduced in this part of the Bill.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill (Tenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I wish there was a place where stalking cases were less prevalent—what there will be are areas where stalking cases are less prevalently reported. To return to those two brilliant multi-agency examples, doing a job really well often increases the crime rate in that area, which is sometimes quite difficult for police forces to deal with. I pay credit to those that bother to do it. The shadow Minister points out that the guidance is advisory, but professionals will be required to have regard to the guidance, and we will continue to work with representatives from the agencies, the stalking sector and others to monitor progress in this area. More broadly, monitoring progress on stalking will form part of the wider ambition to halve violence against women and girls and the work that I, the Policing Minister and the Home Secretary seek to do around how we monitor the standards of policing more widely and assess how well policing is doing in many different areas. I would like to point out something shocking: currently, the police do not have any required standards for reporting on their performance around domestic abuse, sexual violence and stalking. I think the people of this country would be quite shocked to realise that we do not routinely assess the standards of forces on those things. The shadow Minister has my absolute guarantee that monitoring how such things actually work on the ground is something that I will do until the day I die. Question put and agreed to. Clause 71 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 72 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 73 Administering etc harmful substances (including by spiking)