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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)
Merry Christmas, Madam Deputy Speaker. With permission, I will make a statement on the publication of the Government’s strategy to tackle violence against women and girls.
Let us start with the facts. Last year, one in every eight women was a victim of domestic abuse, stalking or sexual assault. Every day, 200 rapes are reported to the police, and many go unreported. Behind every one of those figures is a woman or girl whose life has been shattered. Behind every crime lies a perpetrator who all too often gets away scot-free.
For too long, we have accepted these statistics as simply a fact of life. Today this Government say: no more. We are calling violence against women and girls the national emergency that it is. We are committing to halve these horrific crimes within a decade, and today we publish the strategy that sets us on that journey. The strategy does something that none before it ever has. Until now, responsibility for tackling violence against women and girls has been left to only the crime-fighting departments, which work so often in isolated ways. They provide support that is vital, but it often comes too late to truly change the story.
This strategy is different. It deploys the full power of the state, across national Government and local government. It draws on the experiences of victims and the power of the third sector to transform our approach to these crimes—in our schools, in our police forces, from housing to healthcare, on our streets and behind closed doors, online and offline. The strategy is designed to deliver three goals: first, preventing boys and men from ever becoming abusers in the first place; secondly, bearing down on perpetrators so that those who have offended do not do so again; and, finally, supporting victims so that they get justice when they seek it and the closure that they deserve.
I will start with how we stop the violence before it starts. Because of the proliferation of content that has the potential to poison young minds, the need to address this issue has never been greater. Our strategy tackles radicalisation and confronts behaviour long before it spirals into abuse or violence. Education is undoubtedly the key. We must empower teachers to challenge harmful attitudes and act before they escalate. To do so, we will invest £20 million to tackle harmful attitudes in young people.
Our universal pledge is to change fundamentally how relationships, consent and attitudes can be embedded through education. That means changing the curriculum and developing training for teachers and external providers on healthy relationships and consent. We will also develop targeted programmes for those starting to exhibit harmful behaviours, and we will pilot interventions in schools, focusing in on and managing risk where abusive behaviours are starting to show. We will provide parents and frontline professionals with the support and training that they need to spot the warning signs of misogyny and act on them.
We will make the UK one of the hardest places for children to access harmful content and misogynistic influences online. We must help our parents to protect their children from harmful, poisonous content. We will ban “nudification” tools, which currently enable users to strip clothes and produce intimate images without the consent of those depicted. We will work with technology companies to make it impossible for children in the UK to take, share or view nude images through nudity detection filters.
First and foremost, our goal must be to stop these crimes from ever happening. That means stopping anyone from ever becoming a perpetrator. It also means bearing down on those who commit these awful crimes. In this strategy, we set out significant new powers and tools to pursue these dangerous individuals. Today, police performance varies from force to force, with more than two thirds of rape cases seeing the victims withdraw support in some police force areas. For that reason, by 2029 every police force in England and Wales will have a specialist rape and sexual offences team, mirroring the approach taken by the Metropolitan police.
We will ensure that police forces use the same data-driven approach to tacking offenders that we apply to terrorists and serious organised criminals. New forensic technology will be used to track down rapists and sex offenders, allowing us to reopen cold cases and bring offenders to justice many years after they thought they had got away with it.
We will ramp up our efforts to take perpetrators off our streets, and we will pursue them online too. Following the approach long applied to disrupting child sex abusers, and acknowledging that violence against women and girls is increasingly happening online, we will deploy covert officers online to disrupt offending and bring criminals to justice.
We must also do more to break the cycle of offending. Through the Drive project, we are investing £53 million in ensuring that high-risk, high-harm domestic abusers are subject to intensive case management arrangements. We will also roll out domestic abuse protection orders across England and Wales. Crucially, they can be applied for by a police officer or a court—criminal or family—and, unlike other orders, they do not rely on the victim to act. In the pilot locations alone, 1,000 victims have already been protected in this way. Now, many more will be.
Where crimes are committed, it is essential that we help those who have suffered to get the justice they deserve and as much closure as is ever possible. I have spent most of my life working with the victims of these crimes, and their voices have informed every decision that we have taken. We will be backing this strategy with over £1 billion in victims funding. That includes over half a billion pounds for victims’ services and another half a billion pounds for providing safe housing for victims of abuse as they escape their abusers. As part of this investment, we will support vital victims’ helplines, set up a new service to connect victims with specialist help through their GP and provide up to £50 million for therapeutic support for child victims of sexual abuse.
In the short time I have today, I have touched on only a fraction of the measures in the strategy—one that signals, in its entirety, a transformation in the Government’s response and a Government who are rising to the challenge of the national emergency that we face. Before I finish, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all those who have helped us get to this point. I am particularly grateful to my counterpart at the Ministry of Justice, the Victims Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), for her integral role in developing the strategy, as well as to the Home Secretary; her predecessor, who is now the Foreign Secretary; the Deputy Prime Minister; and, last but by no means least, the Prime Minister and the team at No. 10—they have stepped up to the plate with leadership and ambition, and I thank them all. I would also like to thank all those across different Government Departments who I may have been slightly annoying to at times but who have stepped up admirably, from the national health service to police forces, and all my colleagues sat beside me on the Front Bench today. They have worked incredibly hard. I am also grateful for the incredible dedication of the third sector, which has, rightly, long called for the Government to do more.
Most importantly of all, I would like to thank the victims of these awful crimes—those I have met and worked with for many years, whose bravery and determination have inspired me and always will, and kept me going through what seems like a very long career when it too often felt like change was impossible. Without their support, this strategy would have been impossible. It is, above all else, for them.
I end by imploring those here and far beyond these walls to recognise that this strategy is more than a document; it is a call from a Government who recognise this as a national emergency and are willing to back up their words with action. Ending violence against women and girls is the work of us all—those who might spot a young boy at risk of turning down a darker path; those who might see troubling signs in the behaviour of their friends or perhaps even themselves. It will take all of society to step up and end the epidemic of abuse and violence that shames our country. The challenge is great, but I have never felt more confident that we can rise to it than I do today, because change is coming. We can make women and girls safe, at last. I commend this statement to the House.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
I wish you a very merry Christmas, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I would like to start by thanking the Minister and the colleagues she has worked with for bringing forward this strategy today. Tackling violence against women and girls is a deeply noble aim, and one that the Opposition very much share. Women and girls face particular threats, both in the home and at the hands of strangers. Previous Conservative Governments fully understood that, which is why we took steps such as setting up the grooming gangs taskforce, introducing measures to make it easier for victims to pre-record evidence in rape cases, and rolling out 700 more independent sexual violence advisers to support and work with victims through the police and court process.
I pay particular tribute to my right hon. Friends the Members for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) and for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley) for their work in leading the efforts of previous Governments on this issue, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns), who I know is looking forward to working collaboratively with the Government on next steps after she returns from maternity leave. The work of keeping us all safe is never done, so I further welcome the steps taken in this strategy to continue and enforce a lot of that work—particularly those steps to ensure national coverage of specialist rape and sexual offence police teams, to apply new forensic technology to cold cases and to roll out domestic abuse protection orders.
Truly protecting women and girls demands that we have difficult and sometimes awkward conversations—conversations about sex and consent, about private lives and criminality in the home, and about who is committing these crimes and why. Relationships between men and women and relationships between parents and children are delicate, particular and shaped by long-standing norms and beliefs. Not every country and culture in the world believes, as we do, that women are equal to men, with personal, bodily and sexual autonomy. When people from those countries and cultures come here, this can be dangerous.
Do not just take my word for it. The defence counsel for Israr Niazal, an Afghan asylum seeker convicted of raping a 15-year-old girl, argued that Niazal did not understand the age of consent or the concept of consent more broadly, because no such concept exists in Afghanistan. If we cannot be honest about this, we will fail to achieve the first of this strategy’s goals: preventing men and boys from becoming abusers.
Despite repeated attempts by my Conservative colleagues to secure the release of comprehensive data on migrant crime, the Government still refuse to publish the full breakdown. The indicative data that we have suggests shocking variations in crime rates by nationality and immigration status. According to data from the Ministry of Justice, foreign nationals make up a third of all convictions for sexual assaults against women, despite making up between 11% and 12% of the population. Afghans and Eritreans—the nationalities that made up the largest number of those on small boat crossings this year—are more than 20 times more likely to be convicted of sexual offences than British nationals.
Each and every case of sexual assault is wrong. Perpetrators must face the full force of the law, regardless of nationality, and it remains the case that, statistically, the most dangerous place for a woman to be is in her own home. But we must be able to have an informed and honest debate about whether mass migration is making this problem worse, particularly when a large number of recent migrants come here from countries where attitudes to women are very different from our own. The Minister spoke rightly of the importance of a data-driven approach, so will she work with her ministerial colleagues to release the full data on crime by nationality, including as it relates to violence against women and girls, so that we can fully understand this problem in order to tackle it?
This is relevant not only for the sort of violence and sexual violence against women and girls that has sadly always existed in this country, but for specific cultural practices that are imported and new to this country. Just this week, an article published in the British Medical Association’s academic journal highlighted how differing cultural attitudes towards women can influence behaviour. That piece, on the apparent “harms” of the global campaign against female genital mutilation, argued that in many cultures, women’s bodies
“may be perceived as belonging to a larger group…rather than being subject to individual choices and preferences.”
It went on to argue that an emphasis on women’s bodily autonomy can therefore be “traumatic” to those of other cultures. This is wrong. Individual autonomy is the bedrock of our laws, our culture and our country, as I am sure all of us in this House will agree. So finally, will the Minister please join me in affirming that whoever you are, wherever you may have come from, wherever your family may have come from, and whatever may have happened to you, if you are a woman in Britain, your body belongs to no one but yourself?
Jess Phillips
In the list of people who have put in effort over the years in this regard, I would like to make special mention of Baroness May, who I worked with for many years on many of these issues.
In answer to the hon. Lady’s question, let me give her a really specific answer about data. She is absolutely right that data collection on a variety of different issues has been neglected for some years and is not good enough. Issues relating to how we collect data, whether it is ethnicity data or other forms of data that will inform this strategy, are vital. Having been a pro-choice Member of Parliament and a pro-choice advocate my entire life, I am more than happy to stand here and say, on a woman’s right to make any decision, that, “It is nobody else’s business what I do with my body.” I hope the hon. Lady and anyone else would always join me in telling that to anyone from anywhere, including when they are of our own ranks and communities. I am more than happy to say that.
I say to the hon. Lady that this Government have deported an increased number of foreign national offenders—a 12% increase since her Government’s period in office—and have passed much stronger laws limiting the ability of asylum seekers to claim asylum in our country, and I believe that Conservative Members voted against that Bill. I also say to her that if the only crime that I had to concern myself with halving was that committed by people who arrive in our country, my job would be considerably easier. The vast majority of the data that I am talking about is about people who were born in our country abusing other people who were born in our country, from every culture and every creed. I have yet to come across any community where violence against women and girls does not happen.
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
I welcome the new VAWG strategy and thank the Victims Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), and the Safeguarding Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), who have both worked so hard and who are wholly committed to ending harm against women and girls.
On training for teachers, will that be co-designed alongside girls and boys, so that it is well received and up to date with the latest technology? Big tech has a huge role to play in tackling misogyny. Children are constantly targeted with information when online, including violent pornography or hateful content. We say, “Don’t look”, but the algorithms are screaming at them to look. The Women and Equalities Committee has found that tech companies such as X, Snapchat and TikTok continue to freely publish misogynistic content. Will we see this Government getting tough with big tech companies over their failure to protect children?
Jess Phillips
My hon. Friend is absolutely right when she characterises the kind of violent pornography that young people are exposed to. Among other things, part of the strategy is to ban strangulation in porn. Indeed, I am sure that everybody will go away and read the strategy and some of the guidance that comes from the review on pornography and exactly what we have to do. I am very pleased to say that since the introduction of age verification in July, Pornhub has seen a reduction of 77% in its traffic—my heart bleeds for them. We are seeing the green shoots, but my hon. Friend is right that the strategy tackles head-on how we have to work with tech companies, whether through regulation and/or collectivism, to ensure that the kind of vile crimes that we see happening to children in our country cannot happen any more.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)
I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement. I warmly welcome the Government coming before the House with this much-anticipated violence against women and girls strategy. It is essential that we tackle this issue head-on, and to do that it is vital that we do not just talk about dealing with the horrific consequences of violence—as the Minister has said, that alone is not good enough. We must not accept a system that tells women and girls to expect violence and abuse, but which promises support after their lives have been irrevocably harmed.
Training for teachers is a welcome measure, but unless it is also accompanied by steps to properly moderate online content, there is no doubt in my mind that it will fail. As long as violent misogynistic content reaches children and adults online, this crisis will persist. I have no doubt that the Minister knows that. Will she go further and faster in tackling the devastatingly harmful effect of online content right now? Children are being harmed right now; we need tougher action right now.
We were told that the Online Safety Act 2023 would make a difference—it has not. Now Ofcom has released guidance that we are assured goes further, but it is voluntary and any strengthening will come in only in 2027, which is too late. Without clear legal enforcement, social media companies will continue to put their profits first. Will the Minister commit to holding social media companies properly to account? Will she ensure that Ofcom’s guidance on violence against women and girls becomes mandatory, with enforceable duties and real consequences for failure—now, not in 2027?
Finally, in order for this strategy to succeed where multiple others have failed, it must also include ringfenced funding for specialist services, including for older victims. It must work comprehensively across Government Departments, recognise that minority women may experience violence differently and have clear accountability if progress stalls. Will the Minister set out how the strategy will deliver on each of those points?
Jess Phillips
The hon. Lady will see from the strategy that the issue of tech is undoubtedly in there. I agree that, on assessing how well things are going, it seems quite a long time to wait until 2027. I can absolutely guarantee that I will hold tech companies accountable for their behaviours—I think it is quite famously known that a lot of them are not all that keen on me. I will also work with them on what is possible, for example on ensuring that what teachers know is adapted to the modern world—my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) asked about that. We will also need big tech brains on that, so although I will hold them accountable, it will also be important to work with them.
There is ringfenced money specifically for targeting domestic abuse and sexual violence. The strategy contains a commitment to how we give the standards of commissioning when giving out money from the centre down to areas, in order to look at exactly the issue of “by and for”, which the hon. Lady talked about, whether for older people, for veterans support, or for black and minority ethnic groups. All those “by and for” groups will have to be taken account of.
Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank all the Ministers for their collective hard work with the Safeguarding Minister. It has been worth the wait for this strategy. She will know that for too long it has been an occupational hazard for women in this country that they get hassled wherever they go and whatever they do. Will she therefore confirm that, as part of the strategy, the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023 will come into force in April next year? That will mean that, for the first time ever, the law will recognise that misogyny causes crimes against women and girls, and the police and courts will be able to do something about it. The Minister will know that Citizens UK, the brilliant Sue Fish, Our Streets Now, the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin), and indeed the former Member for that constituency, Greg Clark, and I have been pushing for that for over a decade because we want to see women and girls as free to walk our streets as men and boys are. Will she tell us how we can now feed into the police guidance on the matter?
Jess Phillips
Absolutely, I can confirm that. I am more than happy to meet my hon. Friend and the others she has mentioned to discuss what exactly goes into the guidance. We always have to ensure not just that we write nice words on goatskin in this building, but that we make them workable in the real world. I am keen that everything in the strategy does that.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
I absolutely welcome the strategy published today, and I share the Minister’s ambitions on early intervention. However, in constituencies such as mine, one of the state’s greatest failures has been the historical failure to openly and honestly confront perverse cultural attitudes behind violence and abuse against women and girls. I think of the women in my constituency specifically targeted because they were working-class, white girls. I think of the many women I have met who have poor English and little education, and who do not know about their rights or how to access support. I also think of those many women I have met in my constituency who are too scared to raise those concerns. The Minister rightly speaks of challenging misogynistic attitudes within schools, but can she assure me that the strategy will not stop at the school gate and that the Government will challenge any institution, religious or otherwise, that continues to reinforce harmful attitudes towards women and girls and puts their safety at risk?
Jess Phillips
I absolutely can confirm that. The strategy is not only about challenging institutions, whether that is children’s services, police forces or the court system; we have tried to look at wherever a person might come forward or has previously been failed, and look at ways we can seek to improve that. We cannot undermine, frankly, millennia of patriarchy overnight—if only; I’d do it if I had a magic wand—but I don’t care what it says above the door of your establishment: if you are not working with us, you are working against us.
Jess Asato (Lowestoft) (Lab)
I would like to make the House aware of my appointment as the VAWG adviser to the Secretary of State for Health, and it is the commitments made by the Department of Health and Social Care in this transformative strategy that I wish to raise. Will the Minister confirm that the roll-out of the Child House model represents a significant step in delivering against recommendation 16 of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, and that the introduction of the Steps to Safety service, which will embed specialist support workers across groups of GP practices, will play a huge role in better identifying victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence through those settings?
Jess Phillips
First and foremost, I welcome my hon. Friend—I don’t really need to welcome her to the party; she and I have been in the same meetings in the sector for about a decade.
I absolutely can confirm that. When Departments stand up and say, “We’re going to put so and so millions into this”, what I want to highlight about the measures in the strategy that my hon. Friend has spoken about is the cultural shift of not just the Minister saying, “It’s everybody’s business,” but the Health Secretary, with other Cabinet members, saying, “Okay, what does, ‘It’s everybody’s business,’ mean?” I thank the Health Secretary for making it mean that he understands that if someone is raped, stalked, harassed or domestically abused, they will be sick, and that we have a responsibility to deal with that. The idea that every child in the country will now have access where they live to what can only be described as a gold-plated system, like the one that exists in Camden and in other places across the country, frankly makes my heart sing.
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
I have long argued in this House that when it comes to mental or physical health, it is about women and men, not women or men, and that is important. I welcome the strategy coming forward, but can I also bring a sense of caution, because terms like “toxic masculinity” and labelling young men and boys are potentially a real problem, because they see themselves as destined to cause some problem? Already some of the reporting today enhances that. What are the Government doing to ensure that we are not already socially criminalising young men and boys for having feelings about good masculinity? That is an important definition that the Government need to get right, and I would appreciate her answer on that topic.
Jess Phillips
I totally agree, and I am not a fan of the term “toxic masculinity”. As somebody who has raised two men—I used to be able to say I have children, but I have raised two men; they are very tall—I have watched over the years, since the Me Too movement and then the death of Sarah Everard, a real pouring out of emotion by women in our country that did not include men and boys in the conversation, so they went somewhere else to get their information. So much of the strategy is about inviting those young men and boys in, but also young men and boys who are victims of these crimes. Today there are terrible cases for all to see in the news of sextortion, and my hon. Friend the Victims Minister will be holding a men and boys summit, and there is a men and boys statement as part of the strategy. It is vital that we get this right because we have tried the alternative before, and it did not work.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)
We are all aware of the delays in the criminal justice system. Those can occur at any stage, but they are particularly severe when cases move from the police to the Crown Prosecution Service and then to the courts, each under a separate Department. What mechanism or, better still, individual will ensure joined-up government in tackling violence against women and girls and doing so quickly and effectively?
Jess Phillips
The backlog in our courts is one of the stickiest, most difficult issues, and it covers lots of different Departments that need to get this absolutely right. It is probably the problem that drives our collective work more than almost anything else. We are due to have 100,000 cases in the backlog by 2028 if we do not put in place real, radical change, keeping at its heart the experiences of women and girls. There are things in the strategy around legal advice for victims and greater support for independent sexual violence advisers. All those sorts of things are there, but this will require a radical change.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
I pay tribute to the Minister for her work on violence against women and girls. I welcome what she said to my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman) about her commitment to holding tech companies to account for their behaviours. However, during the passage of the Online Safety Act, the Minister and the Victims Minister, who was also instrumental in the development of this strategy, were at the forefront of calls for a code of practice to protect women and girls online. Now they are in government, why are they not delivering on it? It is in the Government’s gift to amend the Act to make Ofcom’s guidance the code. With the best will in the world, guidance will not make any difference to social media companies’ behaviour, nor their profit-driven models, which are the source of so much misogynistic influence, which teachers are now being expected to deal with. Why are the Government afraid to use all the tools at their disposal to hold tech firms to account for their role in fuelling misogynistic behaviour?
Jess Phillips
I thank the hon. Lady for her kind words and her reminder of the many years that passing the Online Safety Act took. Many of us will remember them—I was about to say “fondly”, but I am not sure that was necessarily always the case. First and foremost, I would not be afraid of doing any of the things that she has highlighted. The hon. Lady was not here, but the Act took 10 years to get to its current legislative state, and it has only really been rolled out since July. The Government have repeatedly said, and what they say in the strategy, is that where we need to go further, we absolutely will.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for her statement and warmly welcome this strategy. I pay tribute to her for delivering this strategy and for her years of personal commitment to the safety of women and girls. I welcome in particular the focus on educating children about misogyny and driving misogyny out of our schools. My hon. Friend will know that the Ofsted inspection framework has previously been largely silent on the issue of misogyny, allowing examples to occur where schools have been rated “outstanding” despite girls at that school having widespread experience of sexual harassment and abuse by their peers. What engagement is she having with Ofsted to ensure that all the Government’s objectives are aligned and that no school where girls routinely experience misogynistic harassment and other behaviours can be regarded as “exceptional”, “strong standard” or “expected standard” under the new framework?
Jess Phillips
The Government have released new curricula on healthy relationships education. Working with Ofsted to ensure that schools are monitored against the delivery of that education is one of the most important things we can do. Schools just saying they do it, and then the teaching never being looked at to see whether it is any good, has led to a hodgepodge and, frankly, some terrible behaviour around the country. I will absolutely take her point away and speak to my colleagues in the Department for Education, which is a fundamental pillar—I am starting to talk like a civil servant; they say “pillar” about everything—in this strategy, because if a school is not safe, how could it be “outstanding”?
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
I welcome the publication of the strategy, and acknowledge the Minister’s commitment over many years to get to this point—this must be a great moment for her.
A few weeks ago, I visited Salisbury Soroptimists, who published “Fresh Thoughts”, a document taken from Dorset and customised for Wiltshire to give information and support for women fleeing domestic abuse, through close working with Wiltshire police, Wiltshire council and the end violence against women and girls campaign in Wiltshire. After I go back and tell them about this strategy, how best can they engage with it to build on the work that the Minister has set out?
Jess Phillips
As I have said, the strategy will live and die on whether everybody takes part in it. The right hon. Gentleman has given me the perfect opportunity to pay tribute to Soroptimists from all over the country. Some of the work that appears in the strategy—specialist advocates for rape victims in courts, for example—started because of volunteer programmes run by Soroptimists in parts of the country. I want to give them the confidence that they can change Government policy, and they can work through the right hon. Gentleman’s good offices to reach out to me. They do amazing work in their local communities.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney) (Lab)
I warmly welcome the statement on ending violence against women and girls. Will the Minister tell us more about how she will support and empower third sector organisations such as Phoenix Domestic Abuse Services in Blaenau Gwent, which always deserve a helping hand?
Jess Phillips
Again, I am poacher turned gamekeeper in ensuring that the voluntary sector is well placed to deliver much of what is in the strategy—not just classic victim support models of national or local funding, but new opportunities and new schemes in our employment and health services. I want to ensure that where those services are operated locally, voluntary sector agencies can be part of them.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
I back the Minister’s comments about the effectiveness of public health on BBC Radio 4 this morning. I agree about the importance of conducting a public health campaign for this. Women for Refugee Women has surveyed women in the asylum system with no recourse to public funds. It found that 38% of them had stayed in abusive relationships because of their inability to access public funds, and that 38% of those women then went on to be raped. Will the Minister tell us whether the Government will agree to implement fully the Istanbul convention, including article 59, to afford real protections to all women?
Jess Phillips
I thank the hon. Lady for giving me the opportunity to say that, throughout this process, many Members from across the House have been to see me about various issues and the importance of this matter in their areas. The strategy definitely tackles issues relating to migrant women. The Government fund specialist provision for women with no recourse to public funds so that they can escape, and we have increased that funding. The type of visa they have does not matter; they can access the funding. One inclusion in parts of the Istanbul convention relates to the firewall between police and support services. I am pleased to say that that is part of our strategy, and we will look to implement it as soon as possible.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Stepney) (Lab)
I commend my hon. Friend for her tireless work to tackle violence against women and girls. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Given my experience of being stalked for many years and securing a restraining order for 12 years, I know that, when they are breached, restraining orders can be very difficult to enforce, unless the police and Crown Prosecution Service work closely together. Many women up and down the country find that really challenging when their lives are at risk. What work will be done between the police, the CPS and other support services to ensure that restraining orders are enforced and that, when they are breached, action is taken to protect women and girls?
Jess Phillips
I thank my hon. Friend for her support in the development of the strategy. One thing that makes me most proud is the advancement in refuge funding. She played no small part in pushing for that and deserves every thanks in the world, not just because she is a brilliant Member of Parliament but because of her experience—one that too many of us in this House share.
Work must be done across the board to look at exactly how protection orders work. As my hon. Friend says, people can have action taken on their restraining orders—although I am about to go to court because somebody has breached one of mine. Domestic abuse protection orders and stalking protection orders are, in my view, considerably better tools and should be used more widely. The strategy is very clear on that.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I welcome the strategy. The Minister will well know that children from homes in which domestic violence is prevalent are all too often conditioned to believe that that is the normal way for relationships to operate. Through changes to the national curriculum in particular, will she ensure that teachers encourage children to come forward with examples of what has happened at home and elsewhere in their families? In that way, we can deal with these matters where they start: in the home.
Jess Phillips
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Anyone who has spoken to victims of domestic abuse who have interacted with children’s social care would know that there was a need for a new strategy. The strategy includes half a billion pounds for the Family First pilot across the country, which seeks to do exactly what he speaks about by ensuring that domestic abuse is dealt with through early intervention. It is now a statutory duty for schools to be informed when children are at home during, or involved in, any domestic abuse incident. We will give schools the tools to know what to do in those circumstances.
Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)
I was surprised to hear the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam), say that our culture understands consent, bodily autonomy, misogyny and violence against women and girls, given that every day women experience violations of their bodies. I just do not think that that is true of our culture at all.
I have an 11-year-old son. I worry about the violent and misogynistic material that boys and young men can be exposed to, and the potential for their radicalisation. Can the Minister assure me that prevention will start at a sufficiently young age for boys, and that every boy will have access to that preventive work?
Jess Phillips
The new curriculum is for children aged four to 16. It is compulsory in schools and should be done in an age-appropriate way. Through the new funding, we will create a series of interventions, so that, if there are worries that a kid is sharing images, or young people are disclosing abuses in their relationships, for example, schools can send people for interventions. I can absolutely assure my hon. Friend—mother of a son as she is—that that provision will be age-appropriate across the board.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I was a secondary school language teacher before I came to this place, and I had to deliver lessons on relationships. I have also raised two women and two men, so I was not exactly uncomfortable around young people, but I felt uncomfortable teaching those lessons, and it seems that I am not alone. About half of secondary school teachers do not feel comfortable delivering those lessons. I know that the strategy includes training for teachers, but, with busy school days and lots of other stuff going on, is it realistic to expect yet another bit of training to result in positive outcomes? Should we not have a professional in each school to deliver those lessons?
Jess Phillips
As somebody who was one of those professionals who went into schools, I could not agree more with the hon. Lady. I attended the same school as the Home Secretary, so when we were building the strategy, we kept talking about which of our teachers we would not have wanted to talk to about these issues, which was quite amusing. No offence to the teachers at our school in the ‘90s, but not many of them came out well when we were thinking about talking to them about consent, pornography or other things. What is being announced today is the use of specialists, but the point is that eventually teachers have to comfortable with talking about these matters. I think that my kids’ teachers are more comfortable than mine were, but there has to be development towards that.
Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)
I want to say a huge thank you to the Safeguarding and Victims Ministers. I was struggling not to get over-emotional as my hon. Friend was making her statement, because many of us have come to this place to make a change for the women and girls in our lives and in our constituencies. This is a watershed moment and it is a chance for us to take individual actions, bringing together good men and good women across our constituencies to speak out and speak for the kind of society we want.
If the strategy is to be truly successful, it will have to increase the confidence of victims, in which case we may see the number of incidents that are reported rise; for me, that will be an indicator of the success of the strategy. One way to increase confidence is to ensure that no matter how high-profile someone is as a self-declared misogynist, they are held to account and brought back to this country to face criminal charges here. Does my hon. Friend agree that this Government should be doing all that they can to ensure that they pursue every single rapist, abuser, perpetrator, stalker, and that that will be the way to ensure that women and girls feel confident in our police and our court system?
Jess Phillips
I thank my hon. Friend for the diplomatic manner in which she is clearly representing high-profile cases in her constituency. I absolutely agree, and it goes to a number of points made by shadow Minister, too: “I don’t care who you are. I don’t care how important you are. I don’t care if you ran a big department store. I don’t care if you are a movie mogul. I don’t care which country you come from. If you do this in our country, we will come for you.”
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
I welcome much of the strategy and I know that it is a personal achievement for the Minister. Anybody who has spoken to a woman who recounts being attacked by her husband or boyfriend and being unsure of whether she is going to leave the room alive, knows that this country still fails to tackle violence against women and to take it seriously. I want to ask about a couple of areas where we know that the state has had a blind spot in recent years. Will she say very clearly that the crimes of the rape gangs were racially and religiously aggravated, and should be punished as such? Does she agree that if there is any law that prevents us deporting any foreign sex criminal or rapist, including the Human Rights Act 1998, we should scrap it?
Jess Phillips
No doubt when the hon. Gentleman worked for Baroness May he was heavily involved in some of this work, so I should thank him for some of things he did in that time. I will not say anything from the Dispatch Box that will affect any case by saying that it is aggravated by one thing or another. I am very proud that for the first time this Government are making grooming an aggravated offence, but without seeing all the evidence, I cannot comment on individual cases. From my years of working with the victims of grooming gangs, I know that there is absolutely no doubt, as the Home Secretary has said, that women and girls were targeted for being white and working class—I have seen that with my own eyes. I will not scrap the European human rights law, but we do not need to do that in order to deport sex offenders. We should have been doing so for a lot longer.
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
I pay tribute to the Minister for her statement, and I thank her and the Victims Minister for their hard work in a truly cross-Government effort to leave VAWG offenders with nowhere to hide. For far too long and far too often, justice for victims of domestic abuse has had to be sought by parents such as Sharon Holland and by groups such as Project Resist, because the system let their daughters down. Tragically, this strategy is too late for two young women from Portsmouth: Chloe Holland and Skye Nicholls were driven to take their own lives because of coercive control by vile partner perpetrators. Will the Minister explain how the new VAWG strategy will ensure that those deaths are recognised for what they are—manslaughter? How will it tackle systematic institutional failings and support our third sector to prevent future tragedies?
Jess Phillips
I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady and pay tribute to Sharon Holland, who I have met a number of times, who campaigns fiercely on behalf of her daughter, Chloe. Suicide is a fundamental part of the strategy with regard to how we end domestic-related deaths and femicide, to call it what it is. A number of different things appear in the strategy, such as how well our domestic abuse risk assessments look for mental ill health; often, assessments are looking for instances of homicide rather than suicide. On the issue of manslaughter, my hon. Friend the Victims Minister has empowered the Law Commission to undertake a review of that exact thing, and we await its findings.
Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
I welcome the strategy, and I commend the Minister for her tireless work supporting victims and trying to reduce violence against women and girls. I welcome the cross-governmental approach and the focus on prevention and public health promotion.
We know that boys as young as nine or 10 are being spoon-fed hardcore violent pornography on social media, even when they are not looking for it. Access to that type of content leads to violent sexual acts being normalised and the way that they view relationships with women becoming warped. The head of a boys’ school that has completely banned mobile phones from its estate has spoken powerfully to me about the effect of being able to have conversations with boys before they start seeing that content online.
While schools are a part of the answer, asking teachers to combat the tidal wave of indoctrination, radicalisation and normalisation that these algorithms are causing is unrealistic: those misogynistic, violent attitudes must be stopped at source. As part of this work, what action will the Government take to ensure that social media companies comply with the Online Safety Act 2023, to make Ofcom guidance statutory, and to push her colleagues across Government to legislate to get smart phones and their misogynistic content out of our schools?
Jess Phillips
A nine-year-old looking at any pornography on any social media site or any site in the UK is illegal. If there are instances of that, they should be reported. We saw a case recently of a pornography site not having age verification. It was fined £1 million by Ofcom and asked to put age verification in place. Those sites will be blocked in the UK if that is not the case. Such measures are already in place, but I ask the hon. Lady to get her schools to report those particular issues, which we will raise with Ofcom. It is important to say that misogyny existed before the internet—tackling misogyny has had to be done for quite a long time. I absolutely agree that we need to support teachers because of what young people are seeing, both inside and outside schools, and the strategy deals with that.
Gurinder Singh Josan (Smethwick) (Lab)
I thank the Minister and all those in Government who worked so hard on this strategy. The shadow Minister, through her rhetoric, does her best to demonise whole communities, but the Minister is right to recognise that abuse occurs in all communities. However, she will be aware of the need to be sensitive to cultural differences experienced by women and girls from different communities. The Minister has already recognised the value of by-and-for organisations working to provide culturally sensitive support for women and girls, and I trust that that support for those organisations will continue, but one area where progress needs to be made is in relation to honour-based abuse. Will the Minister commit to support calls from Karma Nirvana and around 60 other organisations, including Sikh Women’s Aid, for a statuary definition of honour-based abuse, to recognise honour as an aggravating factor in criminal sentencing, and to require multi-agency guidance to identify honour-based abuse?
Jess Phillips
I am very happy to say that coming up with a statutory definition of honour-based abuse, and working on statutory guidance with the organisations that my hon. Friend has identified, are very much in the strategy. I am very proud to do that, because we absolutely need cultural sensitivity in the services we provide, and we need to listen to the voices of the women in those services. It is an honour to work with those organisations, and I will continue to do so.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
I will address another aspect of this strategy: how it relates to male survivors of crimes considered to be violence against women and girls. My ten-minute rule Bill earlier in the year called for a dedicated strategy for tackling interpersonal abuse and violence against men and boys, so that male survivors of rape, sexual assault, domestic abuse, forced marriage and honour-based violence receive the justice and support that they deserve. I recently met the Minister, and I thank her for her time; the discussions were very positive. I have also spoken to the Victims Minister, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), about how to shape the strategy to support male survivors. What provisions are there in this strategy to support male survivors? Will a dedicated strategy to help male survivors be published next year?
Jess Phillips
I really thank the hon. Gentleman for his approach to this issue, and for working collectively with us. Alongside the strategy, there is a statement specifically targeted at men and boys, and there are some specific support services and policies for male survivors, but anything in the strategy, any of the legislation, and any of the support services and the commissioning are for men and boys who are victims. As he and I said, we actually need a piece of work done, because we cannot just paste what women have always used on to men. At the men and boys summit that my hon. Friend the Victims Minister will hold early in the new year, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman can be part of, we will look at exactly what that is.
Kevin Bonavia (Stevenage) (Lab)
May I add my personal tribute to the Minister? This work is a huge achievement for her, but not just for her; she is doing it on behalf of all women and girls in this country. She said that all of us across the country have a role to play, as individuals or organisations. She will recall that in Stevenage we have an amazing charity called Survivors Against Domestic Abuse. One of the challenges it faces is that many victims keep going back again and again, because the justice system is not strong enough for them. I am sure that SADA will welcome domestic abuse protection orders. Will she explain to SADA and other organisations how this Government will help them to provide support to women and girls who need it?
Jess Phillips
I thank my hon. Friend. Organisations such as SADA are absolutely vital to how we roll out new perpetrator schemes, so that victims do not have to do the work, and instead, there is offender management of their perpetrators, and support for victims. Lots of new national schemes will be rolled out as part of this strategy over the next three years, and I very much welcome, and will work with, all organisations across the country to get those schemes right in local areas.
Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)
From the bottom of my heart, I sincerely congratulate the Minister and the Victims Minister on all the work with victims, survivors and the sector across the country that they have put into making this happen. I was proud to work with them both to help secure the domestic abuse identifier, which is in clause 6 of the Sentencing Bill. That will tell us how many domestic abusers there are in prison and in the country at any given time, and what their reoffending rate is. I am keen to understand when the Minister expects that information and data to go online. How does she expect to use that data to monitor the impact and progress of this VAWG strategy? What will the Government do to measure the impact of the identifier?
Jess Phillips
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I always say this, but it was a genuine pleasure to work with him on this issue, and I thank him for his leadership in this space. We obviously have to wait for the Sentencing Bill to pass, but I expect that it will throw up huge amounts of data that will be incredibly helpful. It will take a bit of time to see exactly what data we want to collect and look at, but the process can start as soon as the Sentencing Bill passes. That is certainly our ambition.
Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for her leadership and determination in bringing forward this ambitious strategy. I really welcome the focus on prevention, and particularly the focus on reducing online harm for young people—the Public Accounts Committee, of which I am a member, raised that issue in its report. Bradford Rape Crisis and Staying Put provide vital support to women and girls in my constituency who have been victims of violence against women and girls. I hugely welcome the £1 billion in the statement, if I heard right, that will be invested in victim support and safe refuge. Will the Minister explain how those funds will help victims of domestic abuse in my constituency to get support and a safe place to call home?
Jess Phillips
With regard to my hon. Friend’s Rape Crisis service, there will be a specific amount of uplift to the ringfenced budget for Rape Crisis services in the country. I think Rape Crisis England and Wales asked for a 15% uplift. Funnily enough, that will be from health service funding. That is the cultural change I am talking about—people making this their business. We expect to see those uplifts, so Rape Crisis services will hopefully benefit from that.
On domestic abuse, compared with the £130 million a year under the previous Government for refuge, housing and other support, there will be £109 million extra over the three years. I hope that her organisations will be able to access that through the commissioning process, which we will redesign, so that it works better, and works over a longer period, rather than our doing this every year.
Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)
A recent Ofsted inspection of children’s services in Devon found that they
“share a determination to improve services to care leavers”.
How will the new strategy to end violence against women and girls pay particular attention to preventing harms to care leavers and care-experienced people? How will it build on the improving practice that we see in local authorities, such as in Devon?
Jess Phillips
That is absolutely a vital part of this puzzle. I have worked with the Children’s Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), in the Department for Education on the “family first” part of the strategy—the bit about children’s social care and care leavers. People often talk about grooming gangs, but we cannot talk about grooming gangs without talking about care-experienced children, and the interaction between the two. That is a vital part of getting this right. The Government also have a children in care plan that they will work towards, and I sit on the board for that.
Chris Webb (Blackpool South) (Lab)
From my time as a deputy police and crime commissioner, I know that there has been a growing pattern of violence relating to younger people, especially young boys, in Blackpool and beyond. Will the Minister set out plans to engage with young people, particularly young boys and men, to tackle that?
Jess Phillips
We have not done anywhere near enough to engage with young men and boys about their feelings on this issue, and to devise a system that is best for them. Other than saying, “six-seven”, what do I know about what it is like to be a teenage boy? Not even my children are teenagers any more. We will test a number of models, and that will have to be done in concert with young people.
Tracy Gilbert (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab)
May I welcome the strategy, and thank my hon. Friend and the ministerial team for their tireless work in tackling violence against women and girls? To meet the Government’s target of cutting violence in half, we must end the demand for commercial sexual exploitation, whether it be in pornography or prostitution. What steps will be taken, across Government Departments, through the strategy to eradicate that demand?
Jess Phillips
My hon. Friend will be pleased with the Government action that the strategy proposes with regard to some of the commercial sexual exploitation that occurs within pornography—she rightly points that out—based on Baroness Bertin’s review. Much more broadly, we must properly integrate adult sexual exploitation —including the terrible commercial sexual exploitation—into what we consider to be violence against women and girls, and have robust measures to deal with that. That is a fundamental part of changing this.
Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)
I welcome the strategy that the Minister has set out, and commend her and everyone around her for their tireless, often lifelong, work that has got us to this point. When I speak with the charitable sector and with third-sector organisations, such as Leeds Women’s Aid in my constituency, which has worked in this space for years, they keep telling me that the funding period for grants is often far too short, and grants come up for review far too frequently. They tell me that when the cost of applying for those grants and the time that staff spend applying are factored in, long-term strategic decision making in their organisations becomes really difficult. Can the Minister assure them that the strategy will address this common challenge?
Jess Phillips
As an alumni of Women’s Aid, I can absolutely do so. One of the strongest messages that came from the sector, especially the domestic abuse sector, is how crackers it is that these organisations have to apply for their funding every year. Obviously, we cannot commit funding for longer than comprehensive spending review periods, but we are committing to long-term funding going out of our door and into those organisations’ doors, under a set of standards and commissioning models that we in the Government will work to, because there are also quite a lot of complaints about localised commissioning. That is a fundamental way of allowing those organisations to grow, and to breathe again.