Speeches by Phillips.

“To be completely clear, my target is not to halve recorded crimes. In fact, I expect the figures to go up, certainly in particular crime types. I expect increases in adult sexual violence in particular and I think we are already seeing some of that through Operation Soteria taking on cases that previously might not hav…”

“It gets funded by us. It is funded directly through the IAU budget within the Home Office, and it has the long-term funding for the current spending review period. Obviously, I cannot commit to anything beyond that—or to even being here.”

“I have to say, funnily enough, when going through my correspondence in the car on the way down and signing it off, I thought, “Has Karren Brady taken over?” Then, when I saw it was your name at the end, I just thought that I must have read it wrong at the beginning. I apologise for that.”

“The progress that is undertaken, from the Home Office’s perspective of what our deliverables are within the violence against women and girls strategy, is monitored entirely through my ministerial post and all of the ordinary systems. I meet with the Home Secretary every single week and discuss it with her.”

“You can go for it quickly, yes. Are you all right? People forget that they also have diaries and I am not the centre of the universe.”

“It is an evergreen issue that there are 43 different police forces and very little power to tell them exactly what they have to do on certain things. That is why we set up the national centre specifically because I do not think that what the West Midlands police does on terrorism, for example, is wildly different from …”

“Yes, Karren Brady was excellent. As somebody who comes from an area where Birmingham City football club is, I feel I have to say that she was excellent there. The real need for a cultural shift was why I wanted the strategy to be different. A cultural shift in society is important, but it is very hard for us to ask for…”

“Obviously I was not responsible for previous strategies, but more broadly, strategies in the past—and certainly ones that I have worked under as both a frontline worker and as an Opposition politician campaigning in this space—were much more focused on domestic abuse initially, and then moving into the space of violenc…”

“The strategy was published in December, and so what is it now? We are four months into the strategy publication, which has 259 commitments in it. We have a really specific cross-Government focus on 15 of those as a priority. That is not to say that others are cast by the wayside; there are expectations on the Governmen…”

“We take on board the criticisms that have been laid out, and other strategies and suggestions made. We also live in an environment of not just Select Committees but also, for example, the Angiolini inquiry and the IICSA review, making sure that we look at what has been suggested. I personally get very sick of people sa…”

“That is the VAWG board, yes. I am never bored on that, actually. I like to give out gold stars and whatever the opposite of gold stars is. That has representation from 14 different Government Departments, including those in the devolved Administrations as well. That is where we track the progress of the violence agains…”

“The way in which the violence against women and girls strategy is governed is that the main board that you identify is the inter-ministerial group on violence against women and girls.”

“I also have their phone numbers.”

“When the safer streets mission board chooses that it is focusing on VAWG, VAWG has absolutely been discussed there.”

“Not the whole of it.”

“I am the Home Office.”

“I would like to stress that I am not the whole of it.”

“No, it would have doubled. The number of reported rapes would have doubled; the number of rapes would have halved. That is why the basis for the metric that we are measuring is not based on reported crime figures, because in violence against women and girls reported crime figures, while an important measure, are comple…”

“There is a case precedent where that is not taken into account. There was a case that was fought. I cannot remember the name of the case, but there is a case that was fought.”

“Not yet, but I very much think there will be. The 250 does not stay fixed; there are things that will be added as the work goes on. It is the first step; it does not sit in aspic. We have agreed to update Parliament on the strategy annually. You are absolutely right: I will not keep something going out of embarrassment…”