Speeches by Phillips.

“I feel like I might say this quite a lot. Obviously, much of what you are undertaking is based on the work of the NAO, and obviously it is very easy for me to say, “Because this is not under my watch,” which is the first thing I would say. It is quite difficult for me to comment on the underspend that you are referring…”

“We are not talking about G4S; we are talking about organisations that sometimes have 20 people who work there, and the person who was doing the role might go on maternity leave. The spending of money in this particular space will have some flex in it. Personally, I would always seek to have as little underspend as is h…”

“Do you have a particular recommendation?”

“Probably more than they would like. I am only joking. Quite a lot. Gisela’s phrasing was that there was a lot of change last year. Obviously, the big change was there was an election, and so getting to grips over the last year of exactly what money goes out of the door and the detail of doing zero-based reviews as requ…”

“Yes. I get regular updates, and obviously in the writing of the violence against women and girls strategy, that detail is for ever present in my mind.”

“Nobody would deny that I will always want more money. Every single Government Department will always want more money than it gets. Maybe Defence is having a good week, but I am sure it would say the same. What effect do I think it will have? Fundamentally, I would say the Home Office has a focus on violence against wom…”

“Yes, I totally accept that.”

“I totally accept that, and if you take the example of Operation Soteria, which was being spoken about in the previous evidence session, Clare is saying that it has increased by 43%. The incidences of rape in that community has not increased; we have just found it. Of course, in any data, I expect to see increases in re…”

“I literally forgot the name of it; I am all menopausal. We will have submetrics that sit underneath that for monitoring so that we can test progress along the way because that is quite an overarching measure.”

“I want to see them all going in a downward trajectory.”

“When the violence against women and girls strategy is published, exactly how it will be monitored and what tests will be put against it will be made clear. I do not just want to write a document; I want you good people to be able to scrutinise me on it. In actual fact, what you would want to see going up—like we have s…”

“It is about the VAWG strategy.”

“There is evaluation of some prevention programmes, for example, that we have undertaken that show reductions in violence perpetrated much more quickly, for example, in perpetrator programmes. I do not think that there is a sense where I am just going to be able to go, “Oh, you know, don’t worry. We all said it was goin…”

“I was interested to hear about the at-risk seven-year funding that was being undertaken in Avon and Somerset, and it is very easy for me to ask others to take a risk-based approach on that level. We have a multi-year, three-year spending review, and I very much expect to pay that forward in what is funded through the H…”

“I can only really speak for the Home Office. Contrary to what was just said, we do not fund victim services in local communities; we fund national victim services. For example, we fund the helplines, some are by and for services. What I would say is that from the money that the Home Office has announced for the victim …”

“The national funding that the Home Office gives to victim services is—”

“It goes directly to the provider. The money that I fund for the forced marriage helpline goes directly to the forced marriage helpline. The money we fund for Domestic Abuse National Helpline goes directly to Refuge. So it is ring-fenced in the sense that they have a funding model that means they have to only do that th…”

“That is the Ministry of Justice, is it not?”

“No, we did not put in joint spending bids. There was a process certainly on the Violence Against Women and Girls Board—the cross-government board, which has 14 different Departments—where we all put together the bids that we would put in that would go towards the Violence Against Women and Girls strategy within our own…”

“We can talk about it in the lobby, assuming we are in the same one. I am not assuming anything today.”