Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Jess Phillips Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 28th January 2019 Commons Chamber

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

I, too, want to send my condolences. Maybe it is convenient that I am speaking after the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), because I was born and raised, and both my children were born and raised, in Birmingham Hall Green. I am sure I express the feelings of everybody in Birmingham when I send massive condolences to the Member and his family. It does not matter what path we tread, we are all human in this place. Any man who loved the city that I love has my full and utmost respect. Best wishes to his family.

I want to say a massive thank you to Members who have spoken throughout the debate about their support for Birmingham. They may not have noticed it, but many Government Members have been encouraging more spending in areas where there is high migration. I thank those Conservative Members who have suggested that Birmingham needs more resources. Perhaps the Minister could explain to me why so many of those resources have been cut when they feel that way about areas with high migration. It sticks slightly in the craw of a person who grew up in Birmingham to listen to people, who do not live among migrants and who do not live in diverse places, talk about how difficult it is for communities who have to live in places of high migration. Well, it is not difficult. It is not difficult at all. It is a total pleasure to live among migrant communities. My husband is very concerned. He believes he may be the only person in the entirety of Birmingham not to have heritage elsewhere that allows him a passport in these testing times. Pretty much everybody in Birmingham is from somewhere else. My Irish heritage has never felt closer to me than in these testing times. It is for my city that I stand here and I want to defend migration.

Actually, I am not just standing here and saying, “I really love living in a diverse place.” I have real concerns about the Bill. I have spoken many times to the Immigration Minister about the real, deep-seated concerns I have about immigration: certain misuses of spousal visas, situations where we are not preventing problems such as forced marriage, and other issues that really need to be addressed. I see some of the worst elements of our immigration system, both on the part of the Home Office and on the part of the people who wish to abuse it. I am not here to say that everything is perfect, everything in the garden is rosy, and that we should just open our borders and let everybody in. I am not saying that for a second. But what worries me most about the Bill are the powers that will take away the scrutiny of this place.

I will tell a little story, which Ministers have heard before and maybe the House has heard before, about how the scrutiny of this place makes a difference to our law—although we need to go much further. My constituent who rang the police to tell them that her husband had threatened to kill her ended up in Yarl’s Wood. She was not taken to a place of safety; she was taken to a place of detention. I am incredibly proud of her. She was one of the brave women who, with Southall Black Sisters and Liberty, asked for court action, as a result of which the Government have now stated that a firewall must be put in place between victims of domestic abuse and the detention system. However, what we are being offered currently is not good enough and we are about to extend it to millions more people, so we have to get it right. I will, through the various channels in this House, be seeking special immigration status for women and any victim of domestic and sexual violence. I am sure the Minister will want to work with me on that. But without that scrutiny, without people like me in this House standing up and telling these stories, those laws would not be changing.

My deep worry is that the system proposed in the Bill will not be independent enough. Let us be honest. Those on one side of the House have far less experience of working with the immigration system and its pitfalls than those of us on the Opposition Benches. I imagine that I do more immigration casework in one day than some Conservative Members do in an entire year. It is only right that this place is the place of scrutiny for immigration. That should not be abandoned and given over in Henry VIII powers.

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful speech. We have heard the Government offer certain guarantees and protections in relation to the Henry VIII clause, but it is this place, with its broad and vast experience and its very different Members, where real life experiences can and should feed into Government policy, so that we do not risk damage in the future that will take months if not years to put right.

[Jess Phillips]

Absolutely. It is the best thing about this place and our democracy. We should be really, really proud of it. It is genuinely responsive. Migrant communities who live in my constituency sometimes come out door knocking with me. They cannot believe that I am walking around the streets knocking on people’s doors. They are like, “Gosh, in my home country, you’d be driving past in an SUV with blacked-out windows.” It is one of the best things and that is why this place should have to scrutinise every fundamental change that happens to our immigration system.

I want to make a point that has been well made in the debate. The idea of a £30,000 limit providing a sense of what skill base there is is absolutely flabbergasting. The only job I have ever had that paid me more than £30,000 is the one I am doing right now. That is not unusual for people who live where I live. It is not unusual for people in Birmingham Hall Green, Birmingham Yardley or Birmingham anywhere. I was considered to be skilled and to be high management in the jobs that I did, and I did not earn that much money. It has been pointed out that there needs to be a massive equality impact assessment of how the £30,000 rule is meted out, because obviously men earn more than women and we need to know whether it will have a discriminatory effect on women workers. What about part-time workers? Will the £30,000 be pro rata? If somebody was only earning £5,000 but were only working one day a week, would that count as £30,000? How exactly will that work and how will it be fair to women? The idea that ordinary people are not skilled—we have to be careful with this language—and the idea that my constituents are not skilled because they do not earn over £30,000 is frankly insulting. It is insulting on every level to our care workers, our nurses, our teachers—there are so many people who do not earn over £30,000. I really think that that needs to be revisited.

Perversely, since I was elected I have met many people who earn way more than £30,000 and have literally no discernible skills, not even one. I met none before—I thought I had met posh people before I came here, but I had actually just met people who eat olives. I had no idea of how posh a person could be. Waitrose is apparently not the marker for being really, really posh. There is a lovely Waitrose in Birmingham Hall Green; it is the one I like to frequent. I have not necessarily met such people in this place, although there is a smattering. I would not let some of those very rich people who earn huge amounts of money hold my pint if I had to go and vote while in the bar, because they would almost certainly do it wrong.

I want to speak up for the ordinary people of Birmingham Hall Green and Birmingham Yardley, who are incredibly proud of the migration to their country, and are proud that people want to come here. Those people are skilled, and we should care much more about them than I think sometimes we do.

Gender Pay Gap

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Stella Creasy]

Completely. One of the things that is so powerful about this data is that no sector—public, private or third—is immune from critique, because frankly none of them is valuing women in the way they could. That is reflected in how they pay them, how they promote them and how they work with them.

I am very struck by some of the brands that make a point of selling to women. After all, the one place where women have the majority of power in our society is in their purchasing power, as we account for 70% of purchases in this country. Yet those brands that make a virtue about selling to women are often the ones that, when we look at their pay gap, are some of the worst in this regard. I would not necessarily have put Sports Direct up there as champions of feminism, but its gap is 6%. Contrast that with Sweaty Betty, which has a 62% variation; with Monsoon, which has a 36% variation; or with Boux Avenue, which sells lingerie and has a 75% variation. Even when we are buying those companies’ products, they are not necessarily using the money to pay their women employees equally.

Many people have rightly challenged the data about the gender pay gap. After all, there were only four measures, so I agree that the data is a blunt tool. There are certainly things about the data that I would like to know more about. However, my argument today is that just because the data is not perfect does not mean it is not powerful. I absolutely agree that we need to understand much more than just gender when it comes to inequality in the workplace, the undervaluing of talent and what that means for our economy. It certainly means that we need to understand whether we can get better data on how black and ethnic minority employees are treated in the workplace. We know that the full-time pay gap for black African women is 19%, and that for Pakistani and Bangladeshi women it is 26%. That is in contrast to the general gender pay gap of 18%. Black male graduates earned a whopping £7,000 less per year than their white counterparts in the past 10 years. One of the things we know is that although black men have been more likely to invest in higher education than their white counterparts, they are less likely to have benefited from it in their pay packets. That is an interesting challenge for us.

This data also does not tell us about part-time work, which is absolutely crucial for women because, at 73%, the majority of part-time workers in our country are women. We know that there is a gender pay gap within the data for part-time work, but it is not as clearcut as the one within the data for full-time work, which is the data that we have for these individual companies. The data also does not tell us about age. For many people, understanding the difference of the gender pay gap, and therefore understanding what is driving it, is crucial when it comes to age. People presume that the gender pay gap is something that happens later in life. Actually, we are already seeing a gender pay gap building up with graduates, within 18 months of them entering the workforce. Again, that tells us that the gender pay gap is not necessarily what people think it is.

Also, in relation to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Danielle Rowley), the public sector cannot lecture the private sector in this regard. When we look at the NHS, we see that 77% of its employees are women but it still has a substantial gender pay gap. That should tell us—as the people in charge of public services—something about our ability to value women and their worth in the workplace. Indeed, the private sector pay gap has decreased, from 20% to 16%, while the public sector pay gap has widened to 13.9% in the past five years.

The data also does not tell us what difference getting qualifications makes. Again, when we go on to consider what might be causing the gender pay gap, people make presumptions about the impact of training and qualifications. Actually, when we look at the data, we see that it is not necessarily the case that women who have been educated to a higher level, such as degree level, are being paid more. Indeed, despite more women being educated to a higher level, there has been little or no change in the gender pay gap between groups of workers qualified to a degree level since the early 1990s. We also see a gender pay gap when it comes to apprenticeships. For level 2 and level 3 apprenticeships, women earned an average of £6.85 an hour, compared with the average for men, which was £7.10 an hour.

One of the things that is so powerful about this data is that, because it is so localised to particular companies, it helps people understand what is happening directly to them in a way that a general statistic does not. I have met the Minister to talk about one of the challenges in this regard: when the data was published in April this year, what impact did it actually have on the ground? I ask that because it is one thing for us here in this House to analyse the data and maybe call to account those firms that sell to women without paying women properly, but it is another thing to talk to our constituents about their experiences of what the data shows about their workplace.

Therefore, when the data was published, a cross-party group of MPs put together an anonymous survey called #PayMeToo to try to understand the experiences of women at the coalface. As the Minister knows, the responses were pretty shocking. People often say, “Data is a great disinfectant. Publish the numbers and that will drive change.” The data from the #PayMeToo survey shows that we might be publishing the data, but we are certainly not telling women to talk about it, and those women trying to talk about it in their workplaces face a hostile environment—I hesitate to use that phrase, but it is very clear from the responses we got.

Women were being told that that was just the way it is; that they work in sectors where there are not any women, so why would they expect women to be paid the same as men? They were being told by HR departments that they should bury the data; that they should not be difficult; that they needed to raise a grievance if they wanted to talk about those issues. They were being told that they could get a pay rise, but it would not be equal to that of their male colleagues, because it was about trying to manage the impact of the fuss that was being created. They were recognising that their companies were using what they called “very creative reporting” to try to minimise the gender pay gap, and so pretend that the issue was not happening. They were being told, “Don’t worry. Next year we will employ some more lower-paid men, and that will sort the problem.”

One of the things that I hope the Minister will commit to is following up that data and gathering it herself next year, when the second lot of data comes out. It should not be up to MPs to try to grab these qualitative pieces of research, when what consistently comes back to us speaks of the hostility that women face regarding the impact of this data; of just how sensitive it is for people to talk about what they earn in this country; and of the presumptions and cultures behind the gender pay gap, which we have to deal with.

Let us try to deal with some of those presumptions. At the moment, it is true that we have only half the story with the data, and many commentators both online and offline, including in The Spectator—I am sure Toby Young is watching—will try to fill in the rest of the blanks for us. They tell us that it is about women and their lifestyle choices—bluntly, that women have kids, therefore they want to work flexibly and to take time out, so of course they are going to be paid less.

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

My husband has kids.

[Stella Creasy]

As my hon. Friend says, her husband has kids. She pre-empts what I am going to say: this is not about women, but about parenting. One of the challenges for us is to support both parents to be equally culpable for the child that they have created, including looking after that child, because that is one of the things that would help women in the workplace. There is an impact on women’s earnings when they become parents, but there is not as much of a gap for fathers. For mothers the pay gap is 30%; for fathers it is around 10%. We also recognise from figures provided by the Office for National Statistics that having children can only account for a third of the variation in gender pay. One of the things we have to nail in this debate, if we are to close the gender pay gap and get that economic benefit, is the idea that this is all about having kids. A big chunk of the variation cannot be explained by childcare or caring commitments.

The second thing people say is, “This is about women putting themselves forward. Women do not ask for pay rises; women do not seek promotion; women do not want to be in charge.” Thankfully, we also have research showing that is simply not the case—that, as much as we might admire her in many other ways, Sheryl Sandberg is wrong. This is not about leaning in; this is about systematic discrimination against women in the workplace. An Australian study. Clearly shows that men and women ask for pay rises, just as much as each other, but that men are four times more likely to get one. That is the same for men and women of similar attainment or qualifications, and for men and women of certain ages. Let us stop blaming women for the gender pay gap, because it is not their fault; it is the fault of the environment they are working in.

That environment is what we need to tackle, and that is not just about getting a few more well-paid women at the top—although, if we are honest, we have seen over the past eight years that that is not going brilliantly either. Britain’s public companies will need to appoint women to 40% of their board positions over the next two years if they are to meet the voluntary target that the Government have set, and 100 companies in the FTSE 350 have either no women or just one woman on their board. However, if I am honest, it is not women at the top who I am really concerned about, because the vast majority of the gender pay gap is about low pay and women. It is about the value that we attribute to certain sectors, and the fact that those sectors are dominated by women. The silent majority in this country that we need to speak up for is not the women who we are going to see on the back page of the Financial Times. This is not about getting a few more women in top positions, although some companies have worked out that that would skew their figures; this is about the millions of women working in jobs that are systematically undervalued and underpaid.

We see a lower pay gap within low-paid industries, but we still see a pay gap. Over one in five female workers are low paid, earning less than two thirds of a typical hourly wage or just £8.55 an hour, compared with just 14% of men. That silent majority needs us to recognise that challenging the gender pay gap, and getting the better productivity and the economic benefits of doing so, comes about through how we think about those industries. It comes about through how we think about progression and flexible working within them, and not taking no for an answer; not thinking that this is somehow just about women being more confident or more articulate, or even a bit of anti-bias training, welcome though it would be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

Thank you, Sir David. I congratulate the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) on securing this debate and on her speech, which she delivered with characteristic passion and peppered with huge quantities of data. I start by reflecting that the gender pay gap is at an historic low of 8.9%. We should acknowledge that, but also that it persists—we do not want it to persist; we want it to close and to end up without a gender pay gap—and that practically, most women’s incomes are still hit by having children.

When I was a new mum, I was lucky; I had a supportive employer that allowed me to work flexibly. It was working hard to encourage women to stay at work, having children, and to move up the organisation. I benefited from that, but I recognise that a huge number of women do not have that. In fact, only 11% of jobs that pay more than £20,000 are advertised with flexible working as an option, while the demand is estimated to be closer to 90%. That means that many women are not able to continue working in the job they were working in, and have to make choices that are not the ones they want to make. We know that by the time a couple’s first child is aged 20, mothers are earning on average nearly a third less than fathers.

[Jess Phillips]

Does the hon. Lady agree that one way we could stop some of these problems with the gap between men and women would be to pay men more to stay off work? If we gave men 90% of their pay for the first six weeks of their baby’s life, as we do with women, it might encourage a different atmosphere. Does she agree?

[Helen Whately]

I will say a bit more about maternity and paternity pay later, but we absolutely must ensure that it is equally possible for men to take time off work when they become new dads, and that there is a more equal sharing of childcare responsibilities between mums and dads. One reason why that is not happening is that there are financial barriers to doing so.

I acknowledge the work that the Government are doing to tackle the gender pay gap. For instance, last year it was made mandatory for companies with 250 or more employees to report their gender pay gap. There was some speculation at the time as to the difference that would make, and that companies would not bother to comply. I imagine the Minister will confirm this, but my understanding is that there was 100% compliance and that companies did report it, even if it often did not reflect very well on them. That reporting is making a difference. I checked on what my previous employer was doing, because its reporting did not make it look that great. It did a whole report about the actions it was going to try to take to close the gender pay gap on the back of that reporting. If companies across the country are all doing that, that will make a difference. Now that we have had large companies do that, I am keen to see smaller companies do the same.

The headline point is that it makes good economic sense to close the gender pay gap. It makes sense for companies. We know that companies with greater gender equality do better. They perform better for their shareholders, it is good for their reputation and it helps them attract better candidates. When companies are struggling to recruit for the skills they want, clearly they need to ensure that they attract good women as well as good men. Greater gender equality also makes economic sense for the whole country. If we fail to make the most of the capabilities of women, we are failing to make the most of half the country’s workforce.

It is not just about women, however. Making things better for women has knock-on benefits for men, too. I know lots of dads who wish they had been able to spend more time with their children in the early years. Shared parental leave was introduced by the Conservative-led Government in 2014 to enable dads to do exactly that, but as Members have alluded to, there are barriers to men’s taking up paternity leave. There is more to be done to ensure much more equal taking up of maternity and paternity leave, to help dads play that greater role in their children’s early years and mums to keep their careers going.

I welcome the fact that the Government are looking at placing the onus on companies to assess whether a job could be done flexibly, and to make that clear when advertising it, rather than just relying on people—particularly women, but men too—coming forward asking for their job to be flexible. Anecdotally, I have heard that it is men who come across particular barriers when asking for a job to be flexible. We need to address that, too. I would also like to see greater transparency from large companies in publishing their parental leave and pay policies, so that they are absolutely clear to potential job candidates. There is a whole question around maternity discrimination, which we know is illegal, but is still pervasive. Too many women are forced out of work, whether that is having to take maternity leave early because they are pregnant, being made redundant while on maternity leave, or one way or another finding that they are unable to return to the workplace after having children.

Just to sum up, bearing in mind the time, I urge the Government to keep on pushing to close the gender pay gap. I urge them to keep pushing employers, business, the public sector and Parliament itself to do better.

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.