Speeches by Phillips.

“MHCLG has a specific housing-related one—and it also deals with local commissioning, with the vast majority of it being done through local councils. As Gisela has said, the Ministry of Justice also has a stakeholder board. I attended one at DSIT recently with the violence against women and girls sector on their section…”

“Obviously, we work with Surviving Economic Abuse all the time and, in fact, the Home Office funds Surviving Economic Abuse to do its work.”

“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.”

“Yes. I shall get a loudhailer.”

“What is required by this Government may well be legislative, in lieu of those who could do it tomorrow doing it. For the people who could do this tomorrow, it is perfectly possible, for example, for naked images to be blocked on a device. I have seen the devices and the technology exists. I do not know why a technology…”

“I agree. I find that to be a maddening truth. We digress, but part of the action plan about modern slavery is a really specific focus on the policing and the criminal charging of it, because after all these years it is still woefully low. It seems like the bar must be—there is a lot of work that needs doing on that.”

“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.”

“I am Jess Phillips. I am the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls.”

“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…”

“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…”

“That was one of the specific criticisms that had been made and has been worked on, and I will hand over to Gisela who actually did some of the specific work. The fundamental difference was the definition that the Government were working to and that used by police forces, which is quite a fundamental issue. I will hand …”

“Yes, of course, otherwise we would not have set out to do it. You will not halve the incidence of rape unless you work very closely on the prevention of rape. The fundamental is: what makes men rape?”

“A threat assessment is done by the NCVPP. I always used to criticise Theresa May’s naming of the HMICFRS—or whatever the millions of letters are—and then I did the same thing and gave something a silly name. It undertakes an annual threat assessment, as you might do with terrorism in this space. We were previously not …”

“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 have attended one where that was the case. VAWG is only one part of the overarching mission of the Home Office’s safer streets mission.”

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

“Yes. We report to No. 10. The Prime Minister takes a very keen interest in it. He has held a series of Cabinet-level meetings—of which there is one this week—where he gets the relevant Cabinet Secretaries from the different Government Departments and talks to them about progress against the strategy.”

“I am the Home Office.”

“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.”

“To be fair to Ofcom—and it can answer for its own performance—it is doing what Parliament has given it the power to do in legislation. It does not have the power to do more. As a Government, we have had to put a lot into the Online Safety Act to make anything to do with adult women priority offences. Child abuses and t…”