Jess Phillips
Main Page: Jess Phillips (Labour - Birmingham Yardley)Department Debates - View all Jess Phillips's debates with the Home Office
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Michelle Welsh (Sherwood Forest) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)
The Government have an ambitious programme to reform and improve how child exploitation is tackled. We are introducing a new offence of child criminal exploitation, establishing the independent inquiry into grooming gangs and the national policing operation, and expanding programmes to improve support to child victims of exploitation and trafficking.
Michelle Welsh
In the UK, a child is reported missing every three minutes. These children are often the most vulnerable in society, as going missing can be a key warning sign of exploitation. Despite the clear connection, the term “child criminal exploitation” is not included in the Department for Education’s 2014 statutory guidance on missing children. Given the Home Office also holds responsibility for protecting missing children, does the Minister agree that Departments must work together to urgently update the guidance, so that relevant safeguarding partners can understand the risks, spot the signs and work together effectively to keep children safe?
Jess Phillips
I absolutely agree. The Home Office is working closely with other Departments to ensure that, where someone goes missing, there is a joined-up response, through child protection reforms, updating key multi-agency safeguarding guidance and the better use of technology—for instance our investment in the tackling organised exploitation programme.
Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)
With the Government’s plans to regionalise police forces and the potential scrapping of Staffordshire constabulary, many involved in the care of vulnerable young people fear that there will be less focus on protecting children as fewer senior police officers will be working with local authorities to ensure that they are cared for. What actions will the Minister take to ensure that that does not happen?
Jess Phillips
The right hon. Gentleman raises a key point about how safeguarding will be rooted at the heart of the reforms that will be brought forward. I work frequently with the Minister for Children and others to ensure that whatever local multi-agency hubs are set up are fit for now and for the future. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I will take what he has said in good faith and ensure that that is the case.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)
Online cowards such as Andrew Tate make money by radicalising boys into viewing women as prey, which has been laid bare once again by Louis Theroux’s documentary “Manosphere”. Meanwhile, we have religious preachers encouraging men to beat and rape their wives if they refuse to give them sex at their request. Will the Home Secretary therefore issue statutory guidance requiring police forces to use existing incitement legislation to prosecute those who incite sexual violence against women and girls, and will she share what a difference that could make? The reality is that we have the laws, but they are not being used in creative ways to crack down on those who use their voices in this way.
Jess Phillips
I feel equally disgusted by the examples that the hon. Lady has laid out. The violence against women and girls strategy makes it very clear that in tackling online misogyny, the Government will look across regulation, legislation and education to do everything necessary to protect both the girls and the boys in our country.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)
Sadly, as technology becomes entwined in our day-to-day lives, we recognise the threat that tech-enabled harm poses, which is why the violence against women and girls strategy sets out how we are seeking to tackle it. I am pleased to say that, from 1 April, measures under the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023 will come into force, making it an offence to film where the intent is to cause harassment, alarm or distress because of the victim’s sex.
Wera Hobhouse
Secretly filmed videos of women on nights out have been viewed more than 3 billion times over the last three years, and the videos are often accompanied by vile, degrading comments. These videos have real victims, but they sit in a legal grey area between voyeurism and harassment, so there is very little that the police can currently do. Will the Minister discuss this legal grey area with me, and possibly look at strengthening the law?
Jess Phillips
I am more than happy to discuss the issue with the hon. Lady. I spent this morning in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology with the violence against women and girls sector and Ofcom to look at some of those gaps that she has identified. We will do whatever we can, but absolutely, where it is harassment and is in the public realm, it should be covered by the public sex-based harassment law, but I am more than happy to meet her.
Fred Thomas (Plymouth Moor View) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)
Economic abuse can have devastating impacts on victims, even after the relationship ends. The VAWG strategy included ambitious commitments to tackle economic abuse, and it was considered as a cross-cutting theme in HM Treasury’s financial inclusion strategy. Since 2022, we have funded Surviving Economic Abuse to the tune of £767,000 to strengthen financial systems, raise awareness and support victims.
Fred Thomas
Abusive ex-partners often continue their abuse by withholding funds from children and former partners, deliberately causing financial hardship. That has a huge impact on survivors, forcing them into contact with the perpetrator and enabling their abuser to continue to influence their lives. In Plymouth, I have a constituent who left an abusive relationship, but is now owed £48,000 in child maintenance payments. Despite court orders and liability orders being in place, the money continues not to be paid. Sadly, this is not a rare case limited to Plymouth; I know from speaking to my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouthshire (Catherine Fookes) earlier that this is a national problem. How is the Home Office working with the DWP and other agencies to close enforcement gaps and tackle financial abuse effectively?
Jess Phillips
It is not unusual to hear of such cases, and that is why the Department for Work and Pensions sits on the interministerial group on violence against women and girls. The VAWG strategy commits to removing direct pay, which will enable the Child Maintenance Service to manage and transfer payments, preventing the system from being used as a tool of abuse, which has in the past had fatal consequences.
John Milne (Horsham) (LD)
Following on from the previous question, financial abuse between couples sadly does not always end in separation, and many women struggle to access child maintenance safely. Is the Home Office working with DWP colleagues to strengthen income assessments, such as by using His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs data, and to remove the 2% collect and pay surcharge so survivors can secure child support without direct contact with their abuser?
Jess Phillips
As I said in answer to the previous question, the Department for Work and Pensions is absolutely fundamental and a core part of the interministerial group that works on the violence against women and girls strategy because of the financial tools—not just through mortgages and other assets—that people have and use in cases of domestic abuse and coercive control. It is absolutely vital that we ensure that our benefit system and the state systems that relate to children are not used as a tool for abusers.
Harpreet Uppal (Huddersfield) (Lab)
Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)
We are delivering the cross-Government freedom from violence and abuse strategy, published in December, which sets out concrete actions for halving VAWG in a decade by preventing violence and abuse, pursuing perpetrators, and supporting victims. As part of that, we have already launched our behaviour change campaign, rolled out domestic abuse protection orders, and embedded domestic abuse specialists in police control rooms under Raneem’s law.
Catherine Fookes
Survivors in Monmouthshire tell me that economic abuse not only featured in their relationships, but stopped them rebuilding their lives long after they left. For some, the separation compromised their business. Others face continued control through child maintenance disputes. In what measurable ways will the VAWG strategy tackle economic abuse, and how will progress on that be reported to the House and elsewhere?
Jess Phillips
In the launch of the violence against women and girls strategy, I committed to annually updating the House on progress across a number of metrics—both the overarching metrics, and those that sit in different Government Departments, some of which are having to take responsibility for this issue for the first time. On working with the financial sector and regulators, the strategy talks about exploring how financial products, including joint mortgages, can be used as a tool of abuse. We will work with Departments, such as the Treasury, on exactly how we can monitor progress against all our aims, and I will report on that annually.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
One of my constituents suffered such coercive violence that her partner forced her to allow him back into the home. She could not tell anyone, and he continued to assault her daily. She reported the behaviour to the police, but they did very little. He is in prison for less than five years, and authorities are concerned that he will target her again when he is released. What is the Minister doing to ensure that women are properly protected against coercive violence, and that ex-partners face justice, so that we end this awful cycle of violence?
Jess Phillips
I send all my sympathy to the hon. Gentleman’s constituent, who sounds like she has had a terrible ordeal. Off the top of my head, one measure that the Government have rolled out is the domestic abuse protection order, which gives police the power of arrest, if it is breached. It is the first domestic abuse order that can be taken out for coercive and controlling behaviour. The evidence so far on the police response to those orders, compared with other orders, has been really heartening. We will roll them out across the country.
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)
Kirith Entwistle (Bolton North East) (Lab)
I am currently supporting a constituent who, after leaving her abuser, was locked out of her home, left with thousands of pounds of arrears that had been run up in her name, and denied access to her own bank account. Does the Minister agree that post-separation abuse is too often overlooked and still not recognised widely enough? What steps is she taking to better protect victims?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The violence against women and girls strategy will focus on the specific issue of ensuring that services such as the police get it right about post-separation coercive and controlling behaviour.
Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)