Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Jess Phillips and Danny Chambers(1 week, 3 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)
This Government will treat violence against women and girls as the national emergency that it is, and later this year our new comprehensive violence against women and girls strategy will spell out how we plan to fulfil our unprecedented commitment to halve that violence. In the interim, we have announced Raneem’s law, whereby domestic abuse specialists will be embedded in 999 control rooms, and we are working with police to develop a national framework to track and target high-harm offenders. We are piloting new domestic abuse protection orders in selected areas, and we have outlined new measures to protect women against stalking and spiking.
Dr Chambers
The entire country was appalled by the terrible crime of girls being groomed by gangs of older men, and outraged by the lack of action taken by authorities to help protect those victims. It is about 10 years since these crimes first came to light. Since then we have had the Jay inquiry, which has made 20 recommendations. Will the Government commit to implementing all those recommendations, in full and at pace, to help protect future victims?
Jess Phillips
I thank the hon. Gentleman for both the tone and the sentiment of his question, and I hope that everyone in the House agrees with him. I spent the weekend in my surgery dealing with cases that are live today involving the grooming of both boys and girls by organised groups of varying sorts. It is, in fact, 15 years since the original Jay report on the events in Rotherham. As for the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, we will work at pace with the stakeholders, including the victims and Professor Alexis Jay, to ensure that what was intended in those recommendations can happen. I will do that as quickly as it can possibly be done, but I will not do what was done by the last Government and just say, “Yeah, sure” and then leave it to chance.