Stalking Advocates

Debate between Jess Phillips and Mark Hendrick

Monday 31st January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Jess Phillips]

I 100% agree. I take my hon. Friend back to my terrorism analogy: imagine if we allowed the police to freestyle how they dealt with terrorism—that we did not have specific tasks that police force areas had to follow.

The same priority is never given to male violence against women. It is never, ever considered to be the most pressing issue. More than 20% of all police call-outs are cases of violence against women and girls. Do we think that those cases get 20% of the policing budget in any area? Can we all guess? I do not want to turn this into a pantomime, Sir Mark, but I think we can all guess that they do not get anywhere near that amount. The reality is that this support has to be driven with the political will shown by the 100,000 people who signed the petition. The hon. Member for Bolsover said that he was proud that this was the issue that mattered to his people. The country has spoken again and again in the last two years—more so than ever before—to say, “This issue matters to us.”

In my lifetime of working in this area, which now seems like many lifetimes, I have never known the country to push this as an issue of political will quite as much as it has in the wake of Sarah Everard’s death. These things will only change when every police force area knows that if it does not, the chief constable will be sacked. This proposal will only work if the issue is addressed when allocations of budgets come from the Government. Although I like the £151 million, the Minister and I both know—because it has been announced quite a few times over the years—that £125 million is going to refuge accommodation and has nothing to do with the police. It will go to local councils to offer refuge accommodation—not necessarily to the standard that I would like to see, but still better than nothing.

The reality is that we in this place have to say that, crime-wise, this issue is our priority and we are going to push it through to the bitter end, so that when a Prime Minister stands up and says that the single most important thing a leader can do—the first line of Government—is to ensure the safety and security of their citizens, in their head they are remembering that women and girls exist.

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

For information, the University of Central Lancashire is in Preston, in my constituency.