Rape Gangs: National Statutory Inquiry
Debate between Jess Phillips and Lee Anderson(5 days, 20 hours ago)
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Jess Phillips
As the inquiry is set up—as with previous inquiries with very vulnerable groups of people, such as IICSA—things will have to be put in place to ensure that people can freely give their evidence, and that will have to be done in a trauma-informed way. The twelfth of Baroness Casey’s recommendations was that all the recommendations should be fully funded by the Government, and this Government have absolutely committed to that. I very much expect that, when the chair is in place, those conversations about exactly how that will look will begin. The only thing I do control, I suppose, in any of this, is that this Government will pay for it.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)
The cover-up continues. We have a Prime Minister who never wanted a national inquiry, we have a Minister who never wanted a national inquiry and we have the Labour Back Benchers who never wanted a national inquiry. Does the Minister agree that the victims of these horrific crimes will never get the justice they deserve, as long as we have a Labour Government in charge?
Jess Phillips
It is quite impressive that the hon. Member says that after a grooming victim has stood up and spoken from these Benches, but I have learned to expect it. He talks about a cover-up—maybe he is doing it for clicks; I do not know—and I understand that he thinks he is doing God’s work in fighting this issue, but the idea that it is easy to find a chair or to find people who want to step forward and take part in this process, given the level of bad faith and when the issue is mired in political point scoring of the type he has just done! He should really question his own morality.
Child Rape Gangs
Debate between Jess Phillips and Lee Anderson(5 months, 4 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Jess Phillips
I agree with every one of the asks of that sexual assault referral centre. I am working closely with the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), to try to do all those things. Unfortunately, we cannot mend a very broken system overnight. It is very important for me to say, though, that the cases of grooming gangs that I have come across are horrible—some of the worst I have ever seen—yet sometimes we forget how harrowing it is for children who have been raped by their fathers, their stepfathers or people in children’s institutions. There is no hierarchy; they all deserve our love, care and dedication to taking action for them.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)
Thousands of young, white, British working-class girls have been raped, tortured and abused by Pakistani grooming gangs, yet the Minister refuses to support a full national public inquiry. What I want to know is: is she part of the cover-up?
Hon. Members