Offensive Weapons Bill

Jess Phillips Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 28th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Indeed. There will be lots of other colleagues who signed the amendments who are also of the remainer class. I do not agree with them, but I am nevertheless grateful to them for supporting my amendments.

Since the Bill was published, I have become aware that shooting associations have been concerned that the advice received by Ministers was not based on the facts but on a misrepresentation of target shooting. The consultation in advance of the Bill described .50 calibre single-shot target rifles as “materiel destruction” weapons. Nothing could be further from the truth. Civilian target rifles fire inert ammunition at paper targets. Only the military possess materiel destruction weapons that fire explosive and armour piercing rounds—all illegal in this country for civilian use.

Much of the evidence given to the Public Bill Committee continued on this theme. These target rifles were described by those who advised the Government as “extreme” and “military”, and inaccuracy, exaggeration and misrepresentation were given full play to support the ban. Much of this was refuted by the shooting organisations. They pointed out that the National Ballistics Intelligence Service was mistaken in declaring that the effective range of these .50 calibre rifles is 6,800 metres. The actual effective range is much less than a third of this.

I want to go on to the National Crime Agency’s letter, which the Government seem to place such reliance on and which was placed in the Library of this House.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman may well be coming on to this, but I thank him for giving way. I wonder what evidence he wants if evidence from one of the most senior counter-terrorist police officers in our country is not good enough for him. I wonder why he feels that he maybe knows more about these weapons than they do.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I greatly respect the hon. Lady, and if she will just be a little patient, I will give her exactly what she is asking me for.

The National Crime Agency wrote to the Home Secretary and the letter was circulated to MPs and placed in the Library. It was signed by Steve Rodhouse, the director general of operations at the National Crime Agency. The argument he used, essentially, is that these very powerful rifles might do serious damage. But the same could be said of most commonly used sporting rifles. Indeed, the most commonly used deer rifle in the UK is a .308 that could, and does, do lethal damage. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) pointed out, that is what it is designed to do. It is designed to kill vermin against which it is licensed to be used.

In the letter, Mr Rodhouse uses the words “military” and “extreme”. Nearly all calibres of commonly used civilian rifles originated as military rounds. He also quotes the MOD requirement for immobilising a truck at 1,800 metres. What he does not say is the round used, as I have said, is a high-explosive, incendiary and armour-piercing projectile. That is illegal for civilian use in the UK, where these rifles are used for punching holes in paper targets. It is as illogical to say that a civilian .50 calibre rifle should be banned because the Army uses it to fire at trucks as it would be to ban a .308 deer rifle because the Army uses the same calibre to fire at men. Equally, the residual strike of a .50 calibre bullet and the strike of a .308 bullet are both going to achieve the same end.

With regard to security, which was the basis of my original amendments, and to which I urged the Government to pay very close attention in their consultation, every firearms dealer in this country has to adhere to a level 3 security requirement, and the chief police officer of every police force that licenses every firearms dealer has to be satisfied that those requirements are in place. Some firearms dealers carry weapons that are far more lethal than a .50 calibre weapon because they store them on behalf of the Army. I would suggest that level 3 security would have prevented at least one of these crimes because there would have been the necessary security involved to do that.

Leaving the EU: Rights of EU Citizens

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

It is an important principle, as has been set out repeatedly, that we wish to be an outward-looking trading nation post Brexit. It is important, in my view, that we continue to allow EU citizens to use e-passport gates. Many hon. Members will have heard the Chancellor’s commitment in last week’s Budget to open up e-passport gates to further cohorts of nationalities. Of course, on day one of Brexit people will still be able to use their passport at e-passport gates as they travel into the UK.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I wonder whether the Minister can answer for me the question already put by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) about the charges for EU citizens who have been trafficked here. What assessment has the Home Office made of the number of women trafficked for sex from Romania and whether we will now be charging them for the fact that they have been abused?

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Lady raises an important and serious point about victims of trafficking or modern slavery, and the issue has been raised with me. We have already made an offer that children in care should not have to pay the fee, we are looking very closely at this issue and I thank her for raising it.

Asylum Accommodation Contracts

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my neighbour and colleague in the midlands, the right hon. Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman). I associate myself with what she said. I also want to talk about the financial element of the contracts and how the money works. I do not know whether I am in an exclusive group in this room or perhaps this House, but I am somebody who has applied for a commissioning contract through a national Home Office contract, so I know what it takes to win a contract with the Home Office. I did it for accommodation for victims of human trafficking. When the Home Office, another Government Department or a local authority commissions things through the voluntary sector, I can tell Members that the monitoring, the length of contracts and the amount of money in the contracts is certainly not what has been suggested today when we have talked about the private sector. The idea of a 10-year contract—even a 10-minute contract—in the voluntary sector would be manna from heaven.

However, I have applied and was successful in the commissioning round of national contracts for accommodation and support services for victims of human trafficking. I remember the very detailed stuff I had to learn about special secure thumb turns for security, specialist issues around single-sex accommodation, specialist support that had to be provided, and the training that my staff had to have. It was very detailed, and rightly so. Nobody would criticise that.

The women we supported in the community—we provided support both in the community and within accommodation support services—were largely women who had been trafficked into sexual slavery and forced to have sex with 15 or 20 men a day. “Raped” is what I should say. Because of differences in where they came from and different immigration statuses, even though they were trafficked, some of those women stayed in National Asylum Support Service accommodation. So we would go out and support them in the community, and that took me to Stone Road in the centre of Birmingham.

I had to go and give financial support to a woman who had been through the national referral mechanism and been identified as being trafficked. I remember the level of security that I had to go through: the police checks and the training I had to do to get the contract as a voluntary sector provider. I went to Stone Road and asked to see the woman. She was on the run from a trafficking gang who had trafficked her for sex, and as I walked through the Stone Road accommodation I saw her name written on the wall with a message that said she had to pick up her post. It was just written there. Anyone could have walked in. Now that was not in the contract that I had to sign up to. The standard seemed to be different for G4S at Stone Road from what it was for me, the provider of secure accommodation for victims of human trafficking. The Home Office loves to trumpet how brilliantly it behaves, but it is the same people living in that accommodation.

When I meet the woman, she is pregnant and sleeping on a mattress on the floor. She looks a size 10, but she is nine months pregnant. We have managed to find her decent trafficking victim accommodation, but it is in Sheffield and I have to tell her she cannot go because the standards that my contract stipulate say that we cannot move a woman at that stage in her pregnancy because she needs continuity of care, and she cries and begs me to let her go because she cannot bear to live there any more. I simply want to ask the Minister why, for the same people and the same commissioning body, the standards are so different for me and for G4S.

Stalking Protection Bill (First sitting)

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Committee Debate: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 9th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Mr Foster knows perfectly well that my personal inclination in these matters is to be traditional, and therefore to say no. However, as he is a very close friend of mine, I will allow gentlemen to remove their jackets, if they so wish.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Can I take my shoes off?

[The Chair]

I think shoes might be taking it a little too far. Perhaps hon. Members would remember to switch their electronic devices on only when they leave the room.

We now come to line-by-line consideration of the Bill. We will first consider clause 1 stand part, with which I am prepared to allow a more general debate on the rest of the Bill.

Clause 1

Applications for orders

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Commercial Sexual Exploitation

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

It is, as ever, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley.

I ask the Minister to reflect on the fact that in the main Chamber today Members are considering a Government Bill to stop the sale of part of an animal from other countries. They are legislating to reduce demand for ivory. They are acting, by means of a Bill. At exactly the same moment, there are women face down being abused in this country, who have been trafficked from somewhere else or exploited here. Ivory is an important subject for me, but it is not as important as the girls in my kids’ class, and it never will be, so I ask the Government to act and not to keep kicking the matter into review after review. We can act for elephants; we should act for women.

Normally I spend time in this place giving voice to victims, or to women—standing up and speaking the voices of people who have got in touch with me. Today I want to give voice to some of the punters of sex work, to try to prove that paying for sex is not like paying for any other service; it is abuse. I apologise, because some of this is not particularly pleasant. I have three quotations from men who reviewed women they had exploited on the prostitution review website Punternet. The first states:

“This is a classic case of ‘the pretty ones don’t have to work hard’. Vicky is beautiful, but frankly can’t be arsed. She’s Polish, and her English is not good… I was reminded of the Smiths song ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’... All the while she seemed completely disinterested and mechanical... After a while, during which she remained completely unresponsive, I offered to lick her—she was stubbly, which I dislike, but carried on regardless, and got the same lack of response... I finally decided to fuck her, in mish. Her pussy was hot and tight and I came after less than ten minutes. All the while, she kept her face turned to one side.”

The next stated:

“Very pretty and young girl. Approximately 165 cm tall, nice legs and beautiful breast, nice skin. Very young... If you want to try a fresh, young (says she is 18) and pretty girl is ok, but maybe as she just started to work, is quite passive, scarcely kiss without tongue, doesn’t want to be kissed on the neck or ears, can’t do a decent blowjob and really rides badly on you, i had to stop her several times when she tried to use her mouth or when she got up on me. She really can’t speak a word of English”.

The writer says that he thinks she is Romanian “or something like that”, and that her English is “zero”.

The third stated:

“Saw this girl’s pictures on the other site and thought she looked nice. How wrong I was. She does NOT offer any of the services offered and actually had the cheek to ask for more money to perform things that she is advertising as part of her services!! Her attitude was derisory... I did have sex with her which was a bit like shagging a blow up doll. I should have asked for my money back but given the very dodgy looking bloke with a very aggressive dog downstairs I thought it best to just get out as fast as possible.”

Lovely. So that is just like any other service then. I would ask all Members of the House to think about people speaking of their daughters, wives and mothers, and the women who live in their constituencies, in that way.

There is a significant parallel between domestic violence and prostitution. The all-party parliamentary group on prostitution and the global sex trade found that the “boyfriend” model described by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) was a common way to coerce women into the sex trade from existing relationships. It is fairly uncommon that people get caught for that, but the following text message conversation is between two men who were convicted of sex trafficking in the UK last year. It is between Razvan Mitru, the lead member of the trafficking gang, and Alexandru Pitigoi. They are discussing recruiting Pitigoi’s girlfriend to brothels in the UK and openly acknowledge what they want to do.

Pitigoi texted:

“let me talk to her too cause she doesn’t really want anymore”.

Mitru replied “ why:))”. Pitigoi answered:

“cause she is not happy about it”.

Mitru:

“what the fuck is she not happy about?”

Pitigoi:

“and she doesn’t really like it as you can imagine it’s hard on her bro”.

Mitru:

“she doesn’t have a penny in her pocket and she is being fussy maybe it is hard for her but if she fucked at least she knows what for not for nothing”.

Pitigoi replied, “I know that:))”

I have met that woman hundreds of times. A review is not enough. I ask the Minister to do everything that was set out by my hon. Friends the Members for Luton South (Mr Shuker) and for Rotherham, and to do it now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips]

I know that the Minister cannot direct the research, but I have read various reports in my time working in this field. Amnesty’s report is one that is often cited against my viewpoint as someone who worked with women in the national referral mechanism. Can the Minister ensure that women in the national referral mechanism, which the Government have access to, are taken account of in the research? I cannot remember a single trafficked woman ever being asked their opinion in any research piece that I have ever seen.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am conscious of the independence of the researchers and of giving the research the weight and respect I hope and expect it to be given. I am a little bit cautious about trying to interfere. With my modern slavery responsibilities, I am conscious of the impact of sex trafficking on people in the NRM. There is that body of evidence there as well, and the hon. Lady is absolutely right to point it out.

I am conscious of time, and I want to give hon. Members time to respond.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

My hon. Friend puts me in a difficult position, given that we have commissioned the research and are very clear that it has to be respected by people from across the spectrum of views, and that we will review it appropriately. I do not feel able to give my personal view given that I am speaking on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government. I will say that I sat on the Home Affairs Committee some time ago when it conducted a report into prostitution. That report came to a certain viewpoint, but there were many shades of view in that report. I feel it is right that colleagues know that.

We are clear that we have to help victims, by protecting them and helping them to leave prostitution and get into the way of life that they seek outside prostitution. We are not waiting for the publication of the research for that to happen. We have provided more than £2 million to organisations supporting sex workers, including the £650,000 from the violence against women and girls service transformation fund that we have given to the police and crime commissioner of Merseyside to provide a victim-focused service for sex workers—

[Jess Phillips]

Prostitutes.

[Victoria Atkins]

And prostitutes who are victims of, or at risk of, sexual or domestic violence, abuse, exploitation or human trafficking. I have used both words deliberately through my speech.

Immigration Detention (Victims of Torture)

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. It will not surprise anybody that I wish to join in this debate to talk about my experiences of detained women who have been victims of torture, gender-based violence, sexual violence, female genital mutilation, abuse—anything that can be thought of that happens to us women. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan) on tenaciously and consistently fighting for these people. The Minister should recognise, after a few weeks of being in front of her, that she will not give up.

I associate myself with everything that my right hon. Friend said about the adults at risk policy. That policy specifically states that survivors of sexual or gender-based violence are recognised as “at risk” and so are unsuitable for detention, yet anybody who ever visited Yarl’s Wood would know that the majority of women in there have certainly suffered gender-based violence, sexual violence or domestic abuse.

I went to Yarl’s Wood about a year and a half ago to visit a woman who I knew to have been a victim. She was in Yarl’s Wood regardless of the fact that she had been a victim of quite horrendous trafficking and abuse. I do not know whether it was just because these people knew I was coming, but by the time I got there, they had released her, so I went to speak to another woman, who had nobody visiting her—I went back round through the security.

I am not entirely sure what training the Home Office is getting, but as somebody who was trained as a first responder for human trafficking and modern slavery and as such was allowed to refer into the Home Office’s system, it took me one minute to identify that this woman I had never met before was a victim of human trafficking. I did that by talking to her and asking her about her experiences—it was not difficult. I had no doubt that this woman was somebody I could easily have acted as a first responder for to get her into the national referral mechanism for modern slavery in this country. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind, yet there she was, in Yarl’s Wood, surrounded by people who were meant to have assessed her.

[Kate Green]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing attention particularly to the situation of women and, indeed, men who have been trafficked, because there is plenty of evidence that being in detention makes it harder for those individuals to receive the expert support and advice that they need, to be able to build up trust to report the experiences that they have had to the authorities and therefore to access the national referral mechanism. As long as we put people in detention, we make another part of the system that is supposed to protect them even less likely to be effective.

[Jess Phillips]

My hon. Friend is exactly right, and the matter of trust between the different agencies is something that I shall come on to; in fact, that is the main focus of my speech. I could give hon. Members endless evidence from Women for Refugee Women. I have with me case study upon case study of women who had suffered FGM, been forced into prostitution, managed to escape and ended up in Yarl’s Wood. None of them ever seemed to have rule 35 laid out to them—and if they did, that was after two weeks of being detained.

I need not go through all the stories; I am sure that the Minister is very familiar with the issues and I will gladly send her every single one of the case studies. I want to talk mainly about how the Home Office is not only not assessing the people it finds in detention, but actively seeking victims as low-hanging fruit, in its drive to get deportation numbers up. We have seen from the Windrush situation that there is a target culture that is undeniable—somebody got a big Brucie bonus for getting more people deported. We have seen what that has done to that community.

In my constituency, I was dealing with the case of a woman who was brought to this country on a spousal visa and was abused, tortured, kept locked up and prevented from being fed by her spouse and his family. When she escaped, she came to me, and I did all I could to ensure that her immigration was secured through the domestic violence rules that the Home Office lays out.

It used to be the Sojourner project—or “sojournay” for people who are not from Birmingham. Things were going absolutely fine. We often deal with these cases, and the Home Office agreed that it would put the appeals on hold while we were dealing with this woman’s case. There were some discrepancies. Her husband obviously denied what she had said, and the Home Office, for a spell, decided to agree with him, but we managed to get over that little hump in the road, and then he sent a letter to her family in Pakistan, threatening to kill them—his family in Pakistan would kill her family in Pakistan—and that he would kill her in the UK.

On receiving the letter, my constituent called the police; her brother told her what had happened, and she called the police. I do not necessarily know whether this fits into the fancy idea of torture, but I think that somebody threatening to kill a person’s entire family and them—it is a credible threat, because it is not the first time that they have tried to kill the person—is pretty torturous. The woman called the police. The next day, her neighbour, upset and frightened, called me and said, “She’s told us to call you; she said to call you as she was being taken away.” She was taken away to Yarl’s Wood. When she called the police for help because her life was in danger, the response that she got was that she was taken away to immigration detention.

I cannot think of anything that would make women who are desperate and at risk in this country more unlikely to call the police than the fact that they might be dragged off to immigration detention. It is not only that when this woman was taken to Yarl’s Wood, she was not assessed properly for vulnerabilities or how at risk she might be; they actively took a woman, knowing that her life was at risk. That is totally unacceptable.

As somebody who has dealt with many cases like that, I know that immigration detention and deportation is a tool used by perpetrators of violence and abuse, grooming gangs—you name it, it is used by pretty much every perpetrator I have ever met where immigration was involved in the case. The perpetrators say, “If you tell anyone, they’ll take you away,” and boy, haven’t we just colluded with the violent men in this country that we pretend we are trying to stop!

I thought, “Maybe this is an isolated case and it just happens to be in my constituency,” which I did think was a little odd, but it turns out that it is in no way an isolated case. A freedom of information request was made recently of every police force in the country. Of the 45 police forces asked about the practice of handing over victims’ details, more than half said that they did that; the rest either did not reply or did not give a clear yes or no. Currently, we have a situation in our country where immigration officers are specifically targeting victims who come forward to the police forces. There should be a Chinese wall between victims of abuse and violence, and immigration detention.

I will not read the list of names of migrant women with unstable immigration status who were murdered last year. I asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department,

“how many victims detailed in domestic homicide Reviews were classified as (a) migrant to the UK and (b) no recourse to public funds in the last three years.”

Unsurprisingly, although we share all sorts of information about who is in our custody, we do not collect that information centrally.

It is horrifying to think that people who are vulnerable and desperate, who have suffered all manner of torture, are still being failed by our immigration system when they come forward for help. It is criminal that we are handing over victims of violence into immigration detention centres. We do not even need to do an assessment, because we know; they have rung us up about rape, abuse and torture, whether at home or abroad. That we think the appropriate thing is to get on the phone to immigration detention is totally and utterly unacceptable. It is a massive breach of trust in this country that this is still happening.

Again, I associate myself with everything my right hon. Friend has said and the questions she put to the Minister. I want to know what plans the Home Office has to introduce proactive screening processes in the adult risk process; it has a proactive way of detaining people, as I have just outlined. How will the Home Office ensure that people are detained only for the shortest possible time, as the detention policy sets out? As has been said, why is it only the UK that does not have limits on immigration detention? I want to hear from the Minister about that.

I am sure the Home Office will get used to all the amendments that will be tabled to the Domestic Abuse Bill, because this Chinese wall will be in there. I will stand and ensure that no woman who ever rings up about being raped or having a threat to the life of her or her children, whether here or in a different country, ever ends up in Yarl’s Wood again. I will find every single woman that has happened to.

What plans does the Home Office have to look at different ways of dealing with this? The Corston report on women in prison should be a lodestar and touchstone. There are community organisations to which the Government could pay a tiny fraction of what they are currently paying to whoever it is these days—G4S or Serco, or perhaps it is Sodexo, which makes sausage rolls for hospitals and keeps prisoners safe. Such a range! Those community organisations would actually help these people.

I worked in a human trafficking service. I worked for years in community projects with women with unstable migration status. I can almost guarantee that our rates of return home were better than those of the current detention system, because we did not just send people back to a country with no support. We ensured that those choices were made in reasonable time and that the safest option, whether staying here or going back, was followed.

There is no energy going into looking at better community options for immigration detention, for both men and women. Yet, in every other area of criminal justice, we will see that community detentions have far better rates, are far cheaper and are much better for the human rights of the people involved. I will leave the Minister with that. I cannot ask enough times whether she will confirm for me that a victim of crime will never again be used just to inform our deportation numbers.

Immigration Rules: Paragraph 322(5)

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Like all hon. Members, I have constituency cases in this matter. My constituent Inam Raziq has been fighting his case and it seems to have taken many years off his life, but also £80,000 of his money. He is among the people who helped to organise the hundreds of case studies spoken about today at the Home Affairs Committee.

I sent 300 case studies to the Committee and to the Home Office in November last year. In the seven months since I did that, the Home Office has failed to do anything about the issue. Let us be honest: it is just another issue of low-hanging fruit. It is the Government saying, in a target-driven culture, “Who are the people we can get rid of quickest?” I wrote to Ministers about this issue in November, telling them of all the hundreds of case studies, including the specific case of my constituent Inam. Still, when questioned about it, the Home Office says, “Oh, we didn’t know about it.” I do not write the most amazing emails, but I told you—not you, Ms McDonagh; there is no doubt that you would have listened.

I wonder if the Minister will tell me whether she feels that these were good and honest mistakes. In here, we are allowed to make good and honest mistakes. The Health Secretary made a good and honest mistake when he forgot that he owned some luxury flats. I am sure that colleagues will agree that we can all forget the owning of luxury flats—I am sure I have forgotten many. He forgot to declare them to this place and to—I cannot remember where it was—[Interruption.] Companies House, that is right. That was considered an honest mistake. Inam Raziq is an honest man. I will leave the judgment of the Health Secretary for everyone else here.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

It is a genuine honour to follow the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) and to hear some uncharacteristic honesty from the Government Benches about people who feel left behind. I am speaking about people’s feelings and, if we get this wrong as the inquiry unfolds, about what we will be deciding to do to people’s feelings.

Last week, in Speaker’s House, I met the auntie of Tazmin Belkadi. She is a little girl: both her siblings and both her parents were killed in Grenfell. She is now being raised by her family, who wish for her to have a normal life—a life just like my children’s or the lives of the children of everyone else in the Chamber—rather than having to deal with just having the identity of a kid who was in Grenfell.

I have met children of the Hillsborough disaster who were seven years old when it happened. I have met children of the Birmingham pub bombings families who were nine and 10 when it happened—43 years later the rictus remains, the pain and suffering on their faces: not ever because of the incident in fact, but because of their continuing fight for justice for their families. At every stage, people have not considered their feelings, or how it is never to be able to grieve properly while still also having to fight.

For 43 years, my constituent Julie Hambleton has fought to get some semblance of truth about what happened to her sister. She was a child when her sister died, and every time I speak to her she cries about it as if it is 1974 again. I was not even born, but that is as real to her today as it was all those years ago. Tazmin Belkadi deserves better than that life, growing up trying to ensure that her sisters and her mum and dad get justice. It is in our gift to do that for her—to ensure the passage of facts and truth, and a mea culpa by those who ought to stand up to say, “We did this wrong.” That would stop that little girl from being the future Julie Hambleton or Louise Brookes, whose lives have been changed immeasurably by having to fight the state.

[Dame Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady acknowledge that the pastoral skills of Bishop James Jones, who led the Hillsborough inquiry, brought significant closure for some of the Hillsborough victims and their families? He is now leading the inquiry on contaminated blood products, a long-standing injustice for the victims. Although they can never bring the departed back, the correct assembly of skills brought together—particularly those pastoral skills—can assist the families in bereavement. We have every hope that the same will be true for the victims of Grenfell.

[Jess Phillips]

I absolutely agree with the right hon. Lady; she has been an ally to the families of the Birmingham pub bombings and she knows a thing or two about how families go through these situations. It is vital that we take real care of the feelings of the people involved. So far, that has not happened. We have come to an impasse where they have already had to fight with a petition to get us to listen to a basic thing that they were asking for. That should never have happened.

Let us grease the wheels and not think that these families are unreasonable in their demands. It was raised with me at Speaker’s House that the building is being covered up, and that the families did not it to be covered in white, as if it would fade away and be invisible. They do not mind it being covered up; they recognise the trauma it causes for children in the community, especially when they have to look up at it—although there is diverse opinion, as one could imagine. They wanted it to be covered in a vibrant colour. That just was not listened to. When they complained, they were made to feel a little like they were being a bother.

I want those people to be told that nothing is a bother. I want us as a group of people who make decisions, and the Government, to be a parent to these people. When my son says to me, “I don’t want to go to school”, or “I think I’m being a bother”, I say to him, “Nothing you need is a bother to me. I’m going to help you in your life, to make sure that you feel that I care and I have your best interests at heart.” We have failed in the past so many times to stop people feeling like a bother.

I will finish on the fact that there is a class issue. People recognise hierarchy and feel they cannot speak up. We have to make sure that we never act supreme over these people, because nobody knows more about what happened, and the what of the initial phase at Grenfell, than the people who lived there. The absolute expert in that is Tazmin Belkadi—and she will be for the rest of her life.

Gender Pay Gap

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Wednesday 18th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

My hon. Friend highlights a point that has been raised before. At this stage, we are saying that it is best practice. The advantage of that, I hope, is that we bring businesses with us. In fairness, the vast majority of businesses want to do this. Let us not pretend that those in the corporate sector in the UK are against doing it—they are not. Indeed, the fact that the vast majority of them reported on time—indeed, some of them reported way ahead of time—suggests that they want to do it. That is because businesses know, as McKinsey’s most recent report showed, that if we sort out the gender gap, it has the potential to add £150 billion to our economy. That is a figure that we, and companies, are most interested in.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I am ambitious, just as the Minister is, to change the culture. However, we are a very long way from that. What are the Government going to do to make it easier for women who now know what they have long suspected to raise this issue? The #PayMeToo campaign set up by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and many other women across this House has shown that it is not that women are not asking; they are asking, but the culture in their organisations does absolutely nothing to support any change. It is not the fault of women. What can we do for women who are currently being silenced?

[Victoria Atkins]

I would ask for the help of colleagues across the House. If they know of such employers in their constituencies, or indeed constituents who are employed by companies that are not acting in their best interest, then I ask them to please write to me or stop me in the corridor. I will always be happy to hear about it.

This is a matter of compliance for the EHRC. I think that as time goes on, the swell of public opinion will cause the companies in question, which do not have the good will of the public behind them, to really examine their conscience. We know that happened during the reporting period—there were instances where companies’ results came in, they were put on to gov.uk, the EHRC and the Home Office said, “Come on, that doesn’t look right”, and then the companies re-submitted their reports. Public power, I think, has a great deal to play in this.

Windrush Children (Immigration Status)

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

Yes. The default position will be to accept. The only real change to that will be if there is serious criminality. We will need to work with the individuals to ensure that the information is collected. I want to make sure that this works for the individuals. As I said earlier, this is about individuals whose lives have been upset and who need reassurance, and I want to make sure that they get it.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I offer Conservative Members who may not understand what it is like to work with the Home Office every single day the chance, if they would like, to come and work in my constituency office. As somebody who works with the Home Office every single day, can I ask how many people will be in this team and how long it will last for, because this is not a problem that is going to go away overnight?

[Amber Rudd]

I work with the Home Office every day, and I am aware of some of the challenges. The team will have 20 people in it, it will deliver what I have set out today, and we will see how long it is needed for. What I am interested in is outcomes—effective, sympathetic outcomes for the people who need it and who are so valued by this country.