Speeches by Phillips.

“Two. DWP and the Department of Health and Social Care.”

“Pretty much. In some of the cases where it is a Lords Minister, because they are constantly having to rerun everything that we do in here and there is only one of them, they will always send a Commons Minister. I have to say that attendance has not been an issue.”

“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…”

“Yes. People are often quite keen. Other Government Departments are often keen to come along. I am like, “I’m not sure what you’re going to bring to the party,” but I am trying to come up with a way to make solar energy about violence against women and girls, so if anyone has one I am happy to hear it.”

“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?”

“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 is correct.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Yes, pretty much. We do not have particular trouble with the attendance of Ministers from—”

“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 am not from the Department that deals with legal aid.”

“You go ahead.”

“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…”

“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.”

“The consultation is complete and work is being done to analyse that. I do not wish to get ahead of the King’s Speech.”

“I can only apologise if people feel left out. We undertook a huge series of—I think it was 12—roundtables in the build-up to the strategy and there were 100 different organisations.”

“Yes. If there has been any reform to the NRM that has definitely worked and has been tested now, it is that decision making on children being devolved to local authority areas. I went to see it in Warwick, which is my nearest authority that was doing it. It is speeding up the decisions and fewer are liable for appeal. …”

“Don’t worry—that and Birmingham city, she is on it, or West Ham or wherever she is now.”

“I absolutely agree with you. In that as well, there is an idea of what a victim of modern slavery looks like. In that case, the idea that a police officer sits in front of a well-to-do woman and says, “I’m going to put this woman through the NRM,” seems quite unlikely to me. It is certainly one of the things that the A…”