Jess Phillips MP: speeches

Speeches

• 5 Feb 2025 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  It isn’t utter rubbish—it’s a fact. Anyway, I shall go back to the people who are engaging with the debate. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Michael Payne) that I send a massive thanks to Chris Duffy, who sounds like an amazing officer. I imagine that he is happy in his work because he works with a dog. Maybe giving every police officer a dog is the answer—that is not Government policy, and neither is clipping people round the ear, however much we might want to. I say to the hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) and to my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) —I will repeatedly say this—that I am from the West Midlands police force, and there has not been a year since I was elected to Parliament when the problems with the funding formula have not been raised with me. The west midlands is one of the areas that the issue affects deeply, so I massively hear that point. Two attempts that the previous Government made to look at the funding formula were abandoned, so we felt very much that this year we had to create a stable system. I remind hon. Members that this is our seventh month in government, but we absolutely hear the arguments about the funding formula, which was not reformed in the last 14 years. We have inherited this.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  I am not exactly sure how much it will cost West Midlands police, but what I do know is that the Home Office is going to give it to them. The shadow Minister has talked as if taxes do not pay for our public services—that is an absolute madness; money has to be raised to pay for our public services. The Home Office is funding the national insurance rise for West Midlands police and every other— [ Interruption. ] I cannot believe that it is being argued that our police forces were not completely and utterly decimated, and there seems to have been a tiny bit of whitewashing from some Members on the Liberal Democrat Benches about the role that their party also played in taking 20,000 police officers off our streets. The shadow Minister specifically questioned the Policing Minister on 999 calls and response officers, and on how we will halve violence against women and girls with the help of this settlement. I want to bring him back from wonderland into the real world and tell him a story about Raneem Oudeh, who called 999 13 times on the night she was murdered by her husband. She called out to West Midlands police 13 times, and there was no immediate response—the immediate response that I am being told has always existed, along with, “Oh, something is going to change.” Oh my gosh—I do not know what system the shadow Minister thinks has existed for the past 14 years, but I will tell him what we are going to do. We are going to put specialist domestic abuse workers in every single one of our police force response rooms, because of the failures of response under police forces decimated by the years of Conservative Governments. Frankly, I am flabbergasted by the shadow Minister’s gall. My husband often says, “I don’t know why you continue to be surprised.” My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South and South Bedfordshire (Rachel Hopkins) raised the issue of the funding formula, as have many other Members in the Chamber today. I know that the Policing Minister has visited Bedfordshire and very much heard the particular challenges they face. The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) talked about the mental health and morale of police. I went out to Hertfordshire police recently to see some police officers who were dog handlers; the dogs were there to sniff out the hard drives of sex offenders and child sex abusers. One of the officers had this amazing dog, Micky, and I noticed that it was the first time I had seen a police officer look genuinely happy for quite a long time. Morale in policing and the health of our police officers have been dreadfully tested over recent years, and I noted how chuffed this bloke was to be doing his job with this dog—the dog was lovely. We need to make sure we are looking after our police officers, and the Policing Minister informs me that as part of our reform programme, we are having a very close look at how occupational health is handed out to police officers. The hon. Members for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) and for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) all raised the issue of the Met. The Met is large and complex, and my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) mentioned—as did many others—the issue of police officers being taken away from the frontlines in their neighbourhoods in order to undertake not just policing of the capital, but sometimes national policing in other areas. I reassure Members that the funding formula for neighbourhood policing means that it has to be spent on neighbourhood policing and cannot really be pulled away to other areas.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  Go on.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  I do not disagree that that is how the budgets are given out, but the number of police stations that were closed under the last 14 years of Tory Governments is phenomenal. I believe that a Member mentioned earlier the ones closed by Boris Johnson when he was the Mayor of London. Maybe the right hon. Lady would have heard me already talking about the west midlands, had she been in the debate. I note that a previous Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), is coming into the Chamber, but for most of the time there have been no Conservative Members in here for any of this debate. Will my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East please pass on my massive respect to Coggy? The Policing Minister wanted me to confirm to my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Pam Cox) that she met Unison last week, and she is absolutely happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the terrible and tragic losses of life in her constituency and in the wider area of Essex. We are all looking forward to my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Oliver Ryan) reopening the Chichester custody suite, which he has now become responsible for. Many Members, including him and my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal), have talked with great passion about the importance of neighbourhood policing and the problems of antisocial behaviour in our areas. We face few things more often as Members of Parliament than complaints about failures on antisocial behaviour in our neighbourhoods. I will not do what the previous Government did, and pretend that everything is world-beating and the best it could ever be and that nothing will ever be better than anything that they could ever do. I am not going to do that.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  First, I express my gratitude to all Members who have contributed to the debate. Before I respond to their points—and I will respond—I take this opportunity to say a massive thank you to the police officers, staff and volunteers who work tirelessly to keep us all safe. The contribution they make to our society is simply extraordinary, and we are fortunate to have them. I shamelessly take this opportunity to give a shout-out to Orla Jenkins and Jim Carroll, my sergeant and inspector, who almost live in my office—which is not a particularly good thing. They are absolutely amazing, responsive and well-known neighbourhood coppers. It is so important that people know the names of their neighbourhood officers and can contact them. I do not plan to repeat the top headlines of the settlements that we are debating, as they were covered at length by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention, but I reiterate that the settlement represents a significant investment in policing that will kick-start the delivery of the safer streets mission. Neighbourhood policing is the bedrock of British policing. That is why we have injected an additional £100 million into neighbourhood policing compared with the provisional settlement, which means that we are doubling the funding available to forces to a total of £200 million so that they can carry on the fight against crime and keep communities safe. Let me turn to some of the points raised during the debate. I welcome the comments from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers). It seems that he lives in wonderland. He has talked today as if we have come from some amazing nirvana with regard to policing, not from a situation where every single part of our system—whether it is our courts, our police, our mental health services or our housing—has been so utterly degraded that all of that work landed on the hard-working police forces that he sought to praise.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  Go on.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker—they are definitely not your Benches. I heard groaning earlier about the black hole that was left. The shadow Minister makes a point about the uplift in pay, but in this year’s settlement nothing had been put in that budget by his Government to increase the pay of police officers. Nothing was put into the budget, because that was the way that they operated.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  I have spent time with the victims that the shadow Minister speaks about. In fact, I will be going to see more victims from across the country. I speak to these victims every single week—week in, week out—unlike many of those sitting on the Opposition Benches. Previously, absolutely nothing was done to try to get to the truth in some of these towns. We will do whatever we can to root out this crisis, which is what everybody in this House wants to see, although some Members wish to use it for political ends. We have offered to open up cases, and we have set the taskforce to do exactly that with any victim who wishes to come forward.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  I am not sure that Mr Speaker would allow me to go into quite that level of detail on the amount of discussions I have with the Home Secretary on this issue. It would take hours, because this happens every single day. This weekend, the Government announced that we will be spending £13.1 million to create a national policing centre for violence against women and girls and public protection, and that is due to launch in April.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  I join my hon. Friend in saying what amazing and vital work is being done by people like the Tamworth street angels. It is unacceptable that women feel unsafe when they are out and about, and this Government seek not only to change legislation—on spiking, for example—to make sure our laws are right, but to make sure that, on the ground, we are training people in pubs, clubs, bars and across our night-time economy. We can write words on goatskin, but when the rubber hits the road in places like Tamworth, we need people like the street angels to make sure it actually means something.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady, and I am sure the entire House agrees with the tone with which she speaks about domestic abuse in her area. The National Audit Office wrote what, frankly, can only be considered to be a damning indictment of the previous Government’s violence against women and girls strategy. We will do everything we can to ensure prevention, both through education and with those who perpetrate, which will be a fundamental part of our strategy. Unlike previous strategies, we will actually do it.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  The strategy to halve violence against women and girls is for every single part of our country. The Government recognise that victims in rural and remote areas face particular barriers in fleeing abuse and accessing support. We are already driving forward a range of activities that will support rural victims. The Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 will require local commissioners to develop joint needs assessments for victims of domestic abuse, to identify gaps in support. I encourage all Members to engage with that process when it comes to their local area, and I will happily work with rural MPs in this House to make sure that that is the case.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  Absolutely. From my years of working on the frontline, I know that the boyfriend model of consent to get young people into these groups is undoubtedly one of the most common in that field. I absolutely agree that in any case where any adult has sex with any child, they should be investigated, charged and convicted. A fundamental part of our violence against women and girls strategy is about prevention and working with young people, who are a growing cohort of both abusers and victims in this space, to ensure that we are acting to prevent and not just to protect.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  The number of national public inquires that we have had—for example, into Hillsborough, for which nobody has been held accountable—shows the importance of the Hillsborough law and the duty of candour. Obviously, we committed to it in our manifesto, and it will absolutely be introduced by this Government. We will keep in touch about the timeline for that.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  This Government will treat violence against women and girls as the national emergency that it is, and later this year our new comprehensive violence against women and girls strategy will spell out how we plan to fulfil our unprecedented commitment to halve that violence. In the interim, we have announced Raneem’s law, whereby domestic abuse specialists will be embedded in 999 control rooms, and we are working with police to develop a national framework to track and target high-harm offenders. We are piloting new domestic abuse protection orders in selected areas, and we have outlined new measures to protect women against stalking and spiking.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his question. My FCDO colleagues sit on the violence against women and girls sub-group for the mission, and I have every faith that they take the issues that he talks about incredibly seriously. We have to protect women the world over.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for both the tone and the sentiment of his question, and I hope that everyone in the House agrees with him. I spent the weekend in my surgery dealing with cases that are live today involving the grooming of both boys and girls by organised groups of varying sorts. It is, in fact, 15 years since the original Jay report on the events in Rotherham. As for the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, we will work at pace with the stakeholders, including the victims and Professor Alexis Jay, to ensure that what was intended in those recommendations can happen. I will do that as quickly as it can possibly be done, but I will not do what was done by the last Government and just say, “Yeah, sure” and then leave it to chance.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her kind comments about me. The violence against women and girls strategy that the Government will launch later this year will absolutely root adult sexual exploitation, which so often actually stems from childhood sexual exploitation, into the Government’s violence against women and girls strategy—for the first time ever.

• 9 Jan 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  No one should ever feel afraid of raising any issue in this Chamber with me or anybody else. To reiterate, the ethnicity data is collected. It was published for the first time in November, and I am not entirely sure why the Opposition keep insisting that it has not been published. To be honest, the data that had started to be collected under their Government is not good enough, and we will be working to improve it, but ethnicity data is collected and published.

• 9 Jan 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  As a Minister, I get given a speech that I am told to read out, but the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) reminded me who I am today, so I am going to give an impassioned speech. The first person I will respond to is the Minister, the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies). [Hon. Members: “Shadow Minister!] Sorry, the shadow Minister. No, she is not actually the shadow Minister; the shadow Minister with this brief is not here. The shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp)—he certainly got on the bandwagon—is not here. The shadow Justice Secretary, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), is not here. The Conservatives had to have the same person starting and finishing the debate. Do you know what? I will give credit to the last Conservative Government for the work that they did. I worked with many Members on the Opposition Benches to carry out lots of that work, but what happened was that loads of brilliant words were written on goatskin and rolled up somewhere in this building. Really good legislation was passed, including the Modern Slavery Act 2015, and the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which I remember being a Bill, because I worked on it—not that I am jumping on a bandwagon, too. What did not happen was actual, fundamental change on the ground. Being in this debate has been a little bit like being at my own memorial. My husband said that my house looks like a funeral parlour. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) said she was pleased to see that my gumption has not gone away; I am indeed very much not dead. I have had lots and lots of correspondence from grooming victims—some I have known for years, and some got in touch with me freshly to ask for help with their case, which of course we will provide—and lots of child abuse survivors. I will read out something that a child abuse victim sent me in the last few days: “I’m a victim and survivor, and I gave evidence to the IICSA inquiry. I am angry at the lack of response.” He goes on to say: “We haven’t resourced the police, the courts, victim support, therapies, schools, councils, and I am angry that men, by and large, have turned this into a political football.” Lots of good words have been written on goatskin in this place. The hon. Member for Richmond Park said that cuts have meant that panic alarms have not been put in place and so forth. My hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) mentioned some of the cuts in her area; lots of people mentioned the issue. Do you know what has actually happened? It is harder than it has ever been for a grooming victim to get a house in this country—a place of safety where she can get away from the grooming, whether it be for sexual exploitation or county lines criminal grooming, in which we see terrible cases of knife crime. We could have amended the Domestic Abuse Act to give domestic abuse victims priority need. I pushed the amendment myself. Cracking! But it would have put them on a seven-year-long priority need waiting list. As for the Conservatives’ record on the courts and the criminal justice system, lots of Members have graciously talked about SDS40 today. The shadow Minister mentioned it at the beginning of the debate. All I can say is that we—many of the people sat behind me, as well as the victims Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), and the Home Secretary—worked tirelessly to make sure that this time, when it had to be done because of the terrible failures of the last 14 years, we put some exemptions into the system. I do not remember that happening before. As the victims Minister mentioned, the absolute degradation of our justice system over the last 14 years has left rape victims waiting seven years. People can jump on the bandwagon, and can speak in this building on the subject—I welcome every single word that has been said—but it is action that is needed. “We accepted 18 of the recommendations.” Cracking! I have “accepted” that I am a size 10, but it is not fact. Accepting something does not make it so; it does not change things in people’s actual lives. That is my response to the first speech. The Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen), mentioned Gisèle Pelicot. Many Members mentioned issues affecting women around the world, and we do not serve women in this country if we ignore the plight of women around the world. Gisèle Pelicot deserves to be the person of the year, or the century. What a woman! We have all watched what she has done with absolute pride. Like me, the hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Alex Brewer) came to this place from the sector; it makes me very happy every time that happens. She talked about the femicide data and the sticky nature of the list of names that I read out in this place every year—my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) said that it is also read out in Harlow. The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) talked about a case in her constituency that will go on this year’s list, which has not yet been read out. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington), similarly, mentioned the murders on Christmas day in her constituency. I am not willing to keep that list long. The Government have talked about the metrics by which we will measure change. Of course, I want to get rid of domestic violence and violence against women and girls completely, and I love the suggestion that halving it is unambitious, but I do not remember a previous target. There was no target. Femicide will absolutely be part of the targets. The murder of women by men will absolutely be something that we target and measure, because we count what we care about in this country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) said, focusing on perpetrators is vital. We are working with the police to develop a national framework, using data-driven tools and algorithms, to track and target high-harm offenders. For too long, we have looked only at victims. It is about time we really started to target offenders. I will calm myself down for a moment. The right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley) said that when she stands up in the House to scrutinise our work—she did not say “criticise,” but that was the intimation—it should be taken in good faith, just as she always showed good faith when under scrutiny from me and my sisters. That is absolutely how the scrutiny will be received. She has a record to be proud of on both modern slavery and domestic abuse. She took a cross-Government approach to her work on violence against women and girls, and that iteration of the strategy was considerably better, and attempted to do much more, than the one that came later. I promise that my door will always be open to her. The right hon. Lady talked about welcoming Raneem’s law. That legislation is inspired by a woman close to my heart who comes from Solihull—the neighbouring constituency, close to where I live—whose sister was murdered. When they rang 999, they got no response, so we will embed advice on risk assessments in 999 control rooms, not just make sure that there is somebody there who cares. The measures will ensure that there is real speciality in teams, so that victims are referred to appropriate services, not just given the emergency response that they need. We will seek to put dedicated domestic abuse teams in every police force in the country. A number of Members talked about domestic abuse protection orders in their areas; I see the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) in his place. Domestic abuse protection orders are a good example of walking the walk, rather than talking the talk. The legislation was passed four years ago, but absolutely nothing was done. Then we took office, and set up schemes that are delivering arrests and custody for people who breach the orders. I suggested to the Home Secretary that we might ring a bell for every arrest we get during the pilot. It is all well and good writing words on goatskin, but they do not put people behind bars, or ensure that victims do not ever have to enter a courtroom to get somebody behind bars. That is the outcome we were all striving for, and that is what we have delivered. When I became a Minister, I felt I may have left a Jess-shaped hole to be filled by somebody who would always hold to account the person standing at the Dispatch Box. I cannot think of anybody better to fill that Jess-shaped hole than my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft. She talked about funding; I want her to never stop moaning about that. Apart from the funding from Refuge, it is not okay that grants for the work she talked about come solely from the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice, which are represented on the Front Bench by Ministers. It is not okay that health services across the country do not fundamentally take on this work. We are grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) for her beautiful and impassioned speech, but it is not okay that looking at welfare is not a fundamental part of the duty of jobcentres in every part of the country. As many hon. Members have said, domestic abuse affects so many areas of the life of those affected, and just 10% of women affected get a criminal justice response. As my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum), who is a brilliant advocate on this issue, said, working across Government is the only way to tackle violence against women and girls, and that is exactly what we will do. I am running out of time. Before the hon. Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) took her seat, her predecessor, Sir Gary Streeter, came to me and said, “You will love the woman who I think will replace me—she’s an absolute cracker.” He was not wrong. She talked about a terrible incident in her area, and she led a local response—essentially, an inquiry—that led to recommendations that changed things on the ground. Well done on that, because that is what works. I want to make special mention of the deft manner in which my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Paul Waugh) spoke, and I also want to mention Sara Rowbotham, the whistleblower in the Rochdale case. Hon. Members do not need to look in Hansard to see if I have referred to this case before; I wrote a book six years ago about Sara Rowbotham being a whistleblower in Rochdale. She is one of the bravest and best people I have ever worked with. As for the Johnny-come-lately shadow Justice Secretary, I look forward to reading the book he is writing on the subject. I am about to run out of time. I just want to say a massive thank you to everybody who spoke; I am sorry I have not been able to mention them all. I cannot stress enough that the thing that matters is making something actually happen. As for waving flags, that time is over. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the matter of tackling violence against women and girls.

• 18 Dec 2024 · Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  As somebody who went into the Home Office and found a load of things that were said at this Dispatch Box dwindling and left undone for three years, I take umbrage. The Government will do exactly what we said we will do and will ban deepfakes in this Session. As a victim of it myself, I understand the importance.

• 18 Dec 2024 · Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  At these questions I always end up halfway around the country, but I would be delighted to come. Having worked in this sector, I know that we will not tackle violence against women and girls without a strong and sustainable model that ensures our specialist services are protected. That is what we will work on in the long term, rather than what has always been a short-termist approach.

• 18 Dec 2024 · Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  Funnily enough, I am meeting Cabinet Office colleagues later today to talk exactly about how we ensure the violence against women and girls strategy is across different Departments. Without doubt, one of the most important pillars of that strategy is how we will deal with the online harms. We all wait with bated breath to see how the legislation and the new regulations play out, but we will not draw the line at the legislation that already exists, and where we need to adapt, we will.

• 18 Dec 2024 · Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  Merry Christmas, Mr Speaker. The Government are relentless in our efforts to halve violence against women and girls. In just five and a half months in office, we have launched domestic abuse protection orders in selected areas, outlined new measures enhancing our response to stalking, and announced £30 million in extra funding for victims of domestic abuse and their families in safe accommodation services—and that is simply the beginning. We will continue at that pace.

• 3 Dec 2024 · Tackling Stalking · Hansard source

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  First of all, I must pay tribute to Rhianon. If Members of the House are not aware of her case, what she has been through is harrowing and she continues to campaign. We pay such tribute to all those who speak up to try to make things better for other women, even if in their cases that ship has sailed. That is an amazing thing. I want to assure the right hon. Lady that there should be nothing stopping the same multi-agency situations happening in Wales any more than anywhere else where local health authorities give out funding. We will never solve the issue of violence against women and girls unless every part of Government, including at delegated, local level, takes responsibility. That is certainly a postcode lottery at the moment.