Jess Phillips MP: speeches

Speeches

• 19 Jan 2026 · Disclosure and Barring Service · Hansard source

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  I will give way.

• 19 Jan 2026 · Disclosure and Barring Service · Hansard source

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  We absolutely understand that. Just to be clear, police forces are paid through the DBS system to undertake the checks. The resources are given by the DBS system to police forces to undertake that work. I will ensure that the hon. Member receives the exact cost, but it comes under the costs of the DBS. On the issue of exactly how long a DBS check lasts, there is no one simple answer, but we should encourage more people to be part of the updating system and the checking system. This system has been heavily scrutinised over the years, and it deserves that level of scrutiny, but I have seen a real effort to make sure that it is the best and the fairest that it can be, but we are always here to work for any possible improvements. Question put and agreed to.

• 19 Jan 2026 · Disclosure and Barring Service · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade) very much for securing this debate on an important issue. I am grateful to her and to all others who have contributed this evening. A good amount of ground has been covered, even in the relatively short time available, so I will respond to the various points that have been made. First, I ask for the House’s indulgence as I set out some of the factual background of the Disclosure and Barring Service. The wider disclosure and barring regime is there to protect children and vulnerable adults through the disclosure of relevant criminal records, helping employers to make informed recruitment decisions about the suitability of an individual to work with those groups. It does so through criminal record checks, with the standard, enhanced and enhanced with barred lists levels. Increasing criminal record information is disclosed at each level. The roles and activities that are eligible for the higher-level criminal records check are set out in legislation owned by the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. During the last reported year, the DBS issued a total of 7.2 million certificates. The regime also allows for barring by the DBS of those who are considered to pose a risk, as has been covered. If someone is barred, they cannot work in what is defined as regulated activity in our legislation. As has been identified, regulated activity and institutions that are regulated are two different things—I make that completely clear. Examples of regulated activity include teaching, supervising children and providing health and personal care to children and adults. It does not matter whether it is voluntary or otherwise. Through the relevant arrangements, the DBS ensures that those it has barred cannot work in those roles and have access to vulnerable groups. The DBS’s most recent annual report states that 104,000 individuals are on its children and adults barred lists. I should note that the disclosure and barring regime is not, as has been pointed out, a vetting regime. The disclosure and barring regime focuses on providing employers with information on people, whether that is criminal records, relevant police information or barred list status. This can support robust suitability decisions while allowing ex-offenders to get back into work and employment. As Parliament and the public would expect, the regime is kept under review to ensure that it is effectively delivering on its key objectives, and I am always keen to hear suggestions, especially those, as laid out by the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole, that are based in real life—IRL, as my children would say—with regard to our constituents. We are bringing in changes to respond to the DBS-related recommendations from the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. First, a measure in the Crime and Policing Bill will prevent those on the barred list from working closely with children, even in supervised roles working alongside somebody with a DBS certificate. Currently, if a role involving teaching, instructing or supervising children is supervised by another member of staff, it is not considered to be “regulated activity” under the legislation. This means that an employer can ask only for an enhanced DBS check, which does not include a check of the barred list. That creates a risk that a barred-list individual could work as a volunteer in a school, or as an employee in a youth club or other setting, if supervised. We agree with the inquiry that the risk is too high, and we are changing the law accordingly. Secondly, we are enabling self-employed or personal employees to access higher-level DBS checks if they work with children or vulnerable adults. The relevant provision will come into force on Wednesday—completely coincidentally! Before we made that change, people such as private tutors or paid personal carers could only access a basic DBS check, while their counterparts in settings such as schools or care homes would be expected to obtain the highest level of DBS check.

• 19 Jan 2026 · Disclosure and Barring Service · Hansard source

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  I do not think I can take any more interventions, because my time will run out. I am more than happy to meet the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole, and to work with her to make sure that we get the DBS to be the best it can be, within all the regulatory frameworks that are needed.

• 19 Jan 2026 · Disclosure and Barring Service · Hansard source

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  I will get back to the hon. Lady on the specifics of that. This is about people who are barred from working with children, and ensuring that we have enhanced international knowledge sharing. In the cases raised by the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole, the fact that it was not known that somebody had all those issues was a real failure in the system. I want to give some attention to the requirements that the hon. Lady calls for. The Disclosure and Barring Service does one thing. It is not the regulator, and it does not regulate services; it ensures that employers have the right information. The regulation of activities sits with the relevant Departments and institutions. The rules in residential settings are different from those in the Department for Education. We need to make sure that we do not introduce regulation that means that no one can ever start any sort of group—that is certainly something we have been mindful of in our work on the duty to report cases of sexual abuse among children. However, we need to have safeguards in place. The regulation of requirements sits with the relevant individual bodies; it is not for the DBS to say what the requirements should be. However, I am absolutely open to having conversations about what should and should not be regulated when it comes to safeguarding. I go back to where I started: regulated activity. The hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole asks for clarity in the guidance. Regulated activity is activity that involves someone working with children and vulnerable adults. Frankly, I find it quite hard to imagine that the vast majority of the cases that she has raised would not fall under the scope of regulated activity, but I will absolutely take her point away. Before I finish, I want to pay tribute to Lauren, whose heartbreaking case was mentioned. I speak as somebody who knows what drug addiction can do, and what it costs families. I do not know the full details, but in Lauren’s case, I would consider the activity to have been regulated activity. If someone is teaching children, they are undertaking regulated activity, and parents will have the right to ask whether enhanced checks have been undertaken.

• 5 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Happy new year, Mr Speaker. The violence against women and girls strategy is absolutely for every woman and girl in our country. There are specific problems faced by people in rural communities, and I will gladly work with the hon. Lady and others from rural communities to get that right.

• 5 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  There is an independent system that oversees whether access to files from the DBS has been granted appropriately. If the hon. Gentleman would like to write to me on this specific case, I am more than happy to ensure that it is followed through.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  Again, I am poacher turned gamekeeper in ensuring that the voluntary sector is well placed to deliver much of what is in the strategy—not just classic victim support models of national or local funding, but new opportunities and new schemes in our employment and health services. I want to ensure that where those services are operated locally, voluntary sector agencies can be part of them.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her support in the development of the strategy. One thing that makes me most proud is the advancement in refuge funding. She played no small part in pushing for that and deserves every thanks in the world, not just because she is a brilliant Member of Parliament but because of her experience—one that too many of us in this House share. Work must be done across the board to look at exactly how protection orders work. As my hon. Friend says, people can have action taken on their restraining orders—although I am about to go to court because somebody has breached one of mine. Domestic abuse protection orders and stalking protection orders are, in my view, considerably better tools and should be used more widely. The strategy is very clear on that.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for the diplomatic manner in which she is clearly representing high-profile cases in her constituency. I absolutely agree, and it goes to a number of points made by shadow Minister, too: “I don’t care who you are. I don’t care how important you are. I don’t care if you ran a big department store. I don’t care if you are a movie mogul. I don’t care which country you come from. If you do this in our country, we will come for you.”

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  We have not done anywhere near enough to engage with young men and boys about their feelings on this issue, and to devise a system that is best for them. Other than saying, “six-seven”, what do I know about what it is like to be a teenage boy? Not even my children are teenagers any more. We will test a number of models, and that will have to be done in concert with young people.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  The backlog in our courts is one of the stickiest, most difficult issues, and it covers lots of different Departments that need to get this absolutely right. It is probably the problem that drives our collective work more than almost anything else. We are due to have 100,000 cases in the backlog by 2028 if we do not put in place real, radical change, keeping at its heart the experiences of women and girls. There are things in the strategy around legal advice for victims and greater support for independent sexual violence advisers. All those sorts of things are there, but this will require a radical change.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady will see from the strategy that the issue of tech is undoubtedly in there. I agree that, on assessing how well things are going, it seems quite a long time to wait until 2027. I can absolutely guarantee that I will hold tech companies accountable for their behaviours—I think it is quite famously known that a lot of them are not all that keen on me. I will also work with them on what is possible, for example on ensuring that what teachers know is adapted to the modern world—my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) asked about that. We will also need big tech brains on that, so although I will hold them accountable, it will also be important to work with them. There is ringfenced money specifically for targeting domestic abuse and sexual violence. The strategy contains a commitment to how we give the standards of commissioning when giving out money from the centre down to areas, in order to look at exactly the issue of “by and for”, which the hon. Lady talked about, whether for older people, for veterans support, or for black and minority ethnic groups. All those “by and for” groups will have to be taken account of.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I always say this, but it was a genuine pleasure to work with him on this issue, and I thank him for his leadership in this space. We obviously have to wait for the Sentencing Bill to pass, but I expect that it will throw up huge amounts of data that will be incredibly helpful. It will take a bit of time to see exactly what data we want to collect and look at, but the process can start as soon as the Sentencing Bill passes. That is certainly our ambition.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for giving me the opportunity to say that, throughout this process, many Members from across the House have been to see me about various issues and the importance of this matter in their areas. The strategy definitely tackles issues relating to migrant women. The Government fund specialist provision for women with no recourse to public funds so that they can escape, and we have increased that funding. The type of visa they have does not matter; they can access the funding. One inclusion in parts of the Istanbul convention relates to the firewall between police and support services. I am pleased to say that that is part of our strategy, and we will look to implement it as soon as possible.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend will be pleased with the Government action that the strategy proposes with regard to some of the commercial sexual exploitation that occurs within pornography—she rightly points that out—based on Baroness Bertin’s review. Much more broadly, we must properly integrate adult sexual exploitation —including the terrible commercial sexual exploitation—into what we consider to be violence against women and girls, and have robust measures to deal with that. That is a fundamental part of changing this.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  I really thank the hon. Gentleman for his approach to this issue, and for working collectively with us. Alongside the strategy, there is a statement specifically targeted at men and boys, and there are some specific support services and policies for male survivors, but anything in the strategy, any of the legislation, and any of the support services and the commissioning are for men and boys who are victims. As he and I said, we actually need a piece of work done, because we cannot just paste what women have always used on to men. At the men and boys summit that my hon. Friend the Victims Minister will hold early in the new year, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman can be part of, we will look at exactly what that is.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  Merry Christmas, Madam Deputy Speaker. With permission, I will make a statement on the publication of the Government’s strategy to tackle violence against women and girls. Let us start with the facts. Last year, one in every eight women was a victim of domestic abuse, stalking or sexual assault. Every day, 200 rapes are reported to the police, and many go unreported. Behind every one of those figures is a woman or girl whose life has been shattered. Behind every crime lies a perpetrator who all too often gets away scot-free. For too long, we have accepted these statistics as simply a fact of life. Today this Government say: no more. We are calling violence against women and girls the national emergency that it is. We are committing to halve these horrific crimes within a decade, and today we publish the strategy that sets us on that journey. The strategy does something that none before it ever has. Until now, responsibility for tackling violence against women and girls has been left to only the crime-fighting departments, which work so often in isolated ways. They provide support that is vital, but it often comes too late to truly change the story. This strategy is different. It deploys the full power of the state, across national Government and local government. It draws on the experiences of victims and the power of the third sector to transform our approach to these crimes—in our schools, in our police forces, from housing to healthcare, on our streets and behind closed doors, online and offline. The strategy is designed to deliver three goals: first, preventing boys and men from ever becoming abusers in the first place; secondly, bearing down on perpetrators so that those who have offended do not do so again; and, finally, supporting victims so that they get justice when they seek it and the closure that they deserve. I will start with how we stop the violence before it starts. Because of the proliferation of content that has the potential to poison young minds, the need to address this issue has never been greater. Our strategy tackles radicalisation and confronts behaviour long before it spirals into abuse or violence. Education is undoubtedly the key. We must empower teachers to challenge harmful attitudes and act before they escalate. To do so, we will invest £20 million to tackle harmful attitudes in young people. Our universal pledge is to change fundamentally how relationships, consent and attitudes can be embedded through education. That means changing the curriculum and developing training for teachers and external providers on healthy relationships and consent. We will also develop targeted programmes for those starting to exhibit harmful behaviours, and we will pilot interventions in schools, focusing in on and managing risk where abusive behaviours are starting to show. We will provide parents and frontline professionals with the support and training that they need to spot the warning signs of misogyny and act on them. We will make the UK one of the hardest places for children to access harmful content and misogynistic influences online. We must help our parents to protect their children from harmful, poisonous content. We will ban “nudification” tools, which currently enable users to strip clothes and produce intimate images without the consent of those depicted. We will work with technology companies to make it impossible for children in the UK to take, share or view nude images through nudity detection filters. First and foremost, our goal must be to stop these crimes from ever happening. That means stopping anyone from ever becoming a perpetrator. It also means bearing down on those who commit these awful crimes. In this strategy, we set out significant new powers and tools to pursue these dangerous individuals. Today, police performance varies from force to force, with more than two thirds of rape cases seeing the victims withdraw support in some police force areas. For that reason, by 2029 every police force in England and Wales will have a specialist rape and sexual offences team, mirroring the approach taken by the Metropolitan police. We will ensure that police forces use the same data-driven approach to tacking offenders that we apply to terrorists and serious organised criminals. New forensic technology will be used to track down rapists and sex offenders, allowing us to reopen cold cases and bring offenders to justice many years after they thought they had got away with it. We will ramp up our efforts to take perpetrators off our streets, and we will pursue them online too. Following the approach long applied to disrupting child sex abusers, and acknowledging that violence against women and girls is increasingly happening online, we will deploy covert officers online to disrupt offending and bring criminals to justice. We must also do more to break the cycle of offending. Through the Drive project, we are investing £53 million in ensuring that high-risk, high-harm domestic abusers are subject to intensive case management arrangements. We will also roll out domestic abuse protection orders across England and Wales. Crucially, they can be applied for by a police officer or a court—criminal or family—and, unlike other orders, they do not rely on the victim to act. In the pilot locations alone, 1,000 victims have already been protected in this way. Now, many more will be. Where crimes are committed, it is essential that we help those who have suffered to get the justice they deserve and as much closure as is ever possible. I have spent most of my life working with the victims of these crimes, and their voices have informed every decision that we have taken. We will be backing this strategy with over £1 billion in victims funding. That includes over half a billion pounds for victims’ services and another half a billion pounds for providing safe housing for victims of abuse as they escape their abusers. As part of this investment, we will support vital victims’ helplines, set up a new service to connect victims with specialist help through their GP and provide up to £50 million for therapeutic support for child victims of sexual abuse. In the short time I have today, I have touched on only a fraction of the measures in the strategy—one that signals, in its entirety, a transformation in the Government’s response and a Government who are rising to the challenge of the national emergency that we face. Before I finish, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all those who have helped us get to this point. I am particularly grateful to my counterpart at the Ministry of Justice, the Victims Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), for her integral role in developing the strategy, as well as to the Home Secretary; her predecessor, who is now the Foreign Secretary; the Deputy Prime Minister; and, last but by no means least, the Prime Minister and the team at No. 10—they have stepped up to the plate with leadership and ambition, and I thank them all. I would also like to thank all those across different Government Departments who I may have been slightly annoying to at times but who have stepped up admirably, from the national health service to police forces, and all my colleagues sat beside me on the Front Bench today. They have worked incredibly hard. I am also grateful for the incredible dedication of the third sector, which has, rightly, long called for the Government to do more. Most importantly of all, I would like to thank the victims of these awful crimes—those I have met and worked with for many years, whose bravery and determination have inspired me and always will, and kept me going through what seems like a very long career when it too often felt like change was impossible. Without their support, this strategy would have been impossible. It is, above all else, for them. I end by imploring those here and far beyond these walls to recognise that this strategy is more than a document; it is a call from a Government who recognise this as a national emergency and are willing to back up their words with action. Ending violence against women and girls is the work of us all—those who might spot a young boy at risk of turning down a darker path; those who might see troubling signs in the behaviour of their friends or perhaps even themselves. It will take all of society to step up and end the epidemic of abuse and violence that shames our country. The challenge is great, but I have never felt more confident that we can rise to it than I do today, because change is coming. We can make women and girls safe, at last. I commend this statement to the House.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  As somebody who was one of those professionals who went into schools, I could not agree more with the hon. Lady. I attended the same school as the Home Secretary, so when we were building the strategy, we kept talking about which of our teachers we would not have wanted to talk to about these issues, which was quite amusing. No offence to the teachers at our school in the ‘90s, but not many of them came out well when we were thinking about talking to them about consent, pornography or other things. What is being announced today is the use of specialists, but the point is that eventually teachers have to comfortable with talking about these matters. I think that my kids’ teachers are more comfortable than mine were, but there has to be development towards that.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for her kind words and her reminder of the many years that passing the Online Safety Act took. Many of us will remember them—I was about to say “fondly”, but I am not sure that was necessarily always the case. First and foremost, I would not be afraid of doing any of the things that she has highlighted. The hon. Lady was not here, but the Act took 10 years to get to its current legislative state, and it has only really been rolled out since July. The Government have repeatedly said, and what they say in the strategy, is that where we need to go further, we absolutely will.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  The new curriculum is for children aged four to 16. It is compulsory in schools and should be done in an age-appropriate way. Through the new funding, we will create a series of interventions, so that, if there are worries that a kid is sharing images, or young people are disclosing abuses in their relationships, for example, schools can send people for interventions. I can absolutely assure my hon. Friend—mother of a son as she is—that that provision will be age-appropriate across the board.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  I absolutely can confirm that. The strategy is not only about challenging institutions, whether that is children’s services, police forces or the court system; we have tried to look at wherever a person might come forward or has previously been failed, and look at ways we can seek to improve that. We cannot undermine, frankly, millennia of patriarchy overnight—if only; I’d do it if I had a magic wand—but I don’t care what it says above the door of your establishment: if you are not working with us, you are working against us.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  As I have said, the strategy will live and die on whether everybody takes part in it. The right hon. Gentleman has given me the perfect opportunity to pay tribute to Soroptimists from all over the country. Some of the work that appears in the strategy—specialist advocates for rape victims in courts, for example—started because of volunteer programmes run by Soroptimists in parts of the country. I want to give them the confidence that they can change Government policy, and they can work through the right hon. Gentleman’s good offices to reach out to me. They do amazing work in their local communities.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  That is absolutely a vital part of this puzzle. I have worked with the Children’s Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), in the Department for Education on the “family first” part of the strategy—the bit about children’s social care and care leavers. People often talk about grooming gangs, but we cannot talk about grooming gangs without talking about care-experienced children, and the interaction between the two. That is a vital part of getting this right. The Government also have a children in care plan that they will work towards, and I sit on the board for that.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend. Organisations such as SADA are absolutely vital to how we roll out new perpetrator schemes, so that victims do not have to do the work, and instead, there is offender management of their perpetrators, and support for victims. Lots of new national schemes will be rolled out as part of this strategy over the next three years, and I very much welcome, and will work with, all organisations across the country to get those schemes right in local areas.