Oral Answers to Questions

Tracy Gilbert Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

We are currently looking into whether there is a need for more regulation of live facial recognition, but I recognise that it is a very important tool to which the police should have access. I am having a series of stakeholder meetings with various groups to discuss how we take this forward, but I do recognise how important the technology is and how it can be a really positive way of identifying people and solving crimes.

[Tracy Gilbert (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab)]

Can I place on the record my thanks to the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), who I know will ensure that this Government do more to tackle violence against women and girls than any other Government? In doing so, will the Government amend the strategy to consider prostitution and other forms of commercial sexual exploitation as violence against women and girls?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)]

I thank my hon. Friend for her kind comments about me. The violence against women and girls strategy that the Government will launch later this year will absolutely root adult sexual exploitation, which so often actually stems from childhood sexual exploitation, into the Government’s violence against women and girls strategy—for the first time ever.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tracy Gilbert Excerpts

Monday 29th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)]

22. What steps her Department plans to take to tackle violence against women and girls.

[Tracy Gilbert (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab)]

23. What steps her Department plans to take to tackle violence against women and girls.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Yvette Cooper)]

For far too long, violence against women and girls has been treated as an inevitability, rather than the national emergency that it is. Our mission is for the whole country to halve violence against women and girls within a decade. That has to start with drastically improving the policing and criminal justice response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

I agree on the importance of that. As well as doing work specifically to target violence against women and girls, this Government are determined to increase neighbourhood policing, to get police back on the streets to make sure that people feel safe. We have lost around 10,000 neighbourhood police officers and police community support officers in the past eight years. We need to turn that around so that everyone can feel safe on our streets.

[Tracy Gilbert]

How will my right hon. Friend work with the devolved nations to ensure that we meet those targets?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. The mission needs be right across the UK. We must address this issue in all corners of our country, work in partnership, and learn from what has and has not worked in keeping women safe. We will continue to do that.