Violence against Women and Girls Strategy

John Glen Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

The Government have released new curricula on healthy relationships education. Working with Ofsted to ensure that schools are monitored against the delivery of that education is one of the most important things we can do. Schools just saying they do it, and then the teaching never being looked at to see whether it is any good, has led to a hodgepodge and, frankly, some terrible behaviour around the country. I will absolutely take her point away and speak to my colleagues in the Department for Education, which is a fundamental pillar—I am starting to talk like a civil servant; they say “pillar” about everything—in this strategy, because if a school is not safe, how could it be “outstanding”?

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

I welcome the publication of the strategy, and acknowledge the Minister’s commitment over many years to get to this point—this must be a great moment for her.

A few weeks ago, I visited Salisbury Soroptimists, who published “Fresh Thoughts”, a document taken from Dorset and customised for Wiltshire to give information and support for women fleeing domestic abuse, through close working with Wiltshire police, Wiltshire council and the end violence against women and girls campaign in Wiltshire. After I go back and tell them about this strategy, how best can they engage with it to build on the work that the Minister has set out?

[Jess Phillips]

As I have said, the strategy will live and die on whether everybody takes part in it. The right hon. Gentleman has given me the perfect opportunity to pay tribute to Soroptimists from all over the country. Some of the work that appears in the strategy—specialist advocates for rape victims in courts, for example—started because of volunteer programmes run by Soroptimists in parts of the country. I want to give them the confidence that they can change Government policy, and they can work through the right hon. Gentleman’s good offices to reach out to me. They do amazing work in their local communities.