Speeches by Phillipson.

“I understand your concerns. If I may, Chair, I will ensure that further information is provided on all those points.”

“No, I understand, and it is a very reasonable question. Both of us have a busy set of responsibilities, but if you want something doing, you usually ask a busy person, don’t you? More seriously, we are both able to dedicate the necessary time to this crucial work. I find the work that I do around equalities, together w…”

“The OEO is a Cabinet Office business unit. It leads on that cross-governmental, cross-cutting policy related to all the areas that you will be aware of. It is right that it sits at the heart of Government through the Cabinet Office because so much of that work does require co-ordination across Government Departments. T…”

“Of course, changing the name of an organisation only gets you so far, but that was an important signal. I think the ambitious programme that we have set out really does speak for itself—the legislation that we have already brought forward as a Government and that we are intending to bring forward, and how we have demon…”

“There are formal arrangements in a number of areas of work. Violence against women and girls is one example, but there are other emerging areas, too. I will give another example: we are working across Government on SEND reform through a ministerial working group in that area. There are a number of ways that we are seek…”

“Anneliese, do you want to speak to that, because it covers legislation as well, doesn’t it?”

“We are committed to enacting the socioeconomic duty, and we intend to set out in due course when that will happen, but there is also the relationship with the opportunity mission, which is cross-governmental. The key focus of that is to ensure that background is no barrier to opportunity. We are looking at the measures…”

“Great question.”

“I will just add that, alongside the work that I have talked about today, I co-chair the child poverty taskforce with the Work and Pensions Secretary. We know that far too many children in our country are growing up in poverty and, again, this is an area where we are working right across Government to make sure that we …”

“Would you like me to address the precise measure as well?”

“It will apply differently to different organisations. The change to national insurance contributions was a difficult but necessary decision in order to raise the revenue that is required to fund our public services and restore economic stability. I recognise that that involved some very difficult decisions on tax. I re…”

“This is a crucial area. I am incredibly passionate about making sure we have really high-quality and accessible early education and childcare in terms of women’s life chances. It is women in particular that we are talking about here, who often suffer that disadvantage when childcare is not available and accessible. Alo…”

“I understand the argument, and there is a need to reform the system overall. We will reform the system through the course of this Parliament. There are elements of the offer that are available to disadvantaged families, in the parlance, but I appreciate that there are cliff edges within the system. That is something th…”

“I am not aware that I have, but I am happy to check and come back on that point. Just to re-emphasise the point that Anneliese was making around the approach that the Government take in these areas, when it comes to single-sex exemptions, we want providers to have absolute clarity on what is covered by the law. Before …”

“Our first priority is to appoint the new chair, and the recruitment campaign for that began in November last year. The advert closed on 8 January. A recruitment campaign for additional commissioners will begin after the chair is identified, including for a Wales and Scotland commissioner. In the meanwhile, we have exte…”

“The recruitment process for the chair is well under way; that advert closed in January. We want to move as rapidly as we can to make sure that the new chair is put in place. To the question on the wider complement, of course, we are within quoracy, so the EHRC can continue to operate, but I recognise that it is importa…”

“For 2024-25, the EHRC received a slightly increased baseline budget delegation of £17.5 million, which was up from £17.1 million. During the previous financial year, the Cabinet Office provided up to £0.8 million of additional funding to accommodate in-year pressures. The support has been put in place but, as an indepe…”

“As I was talking about earlier, we have the measures in place for how we will seek to track progress over the decade, but you are right that alongside that we have commitments to creating and making sure the full legislative framework is available for prosecution of emerging offences—what you just described, for exampl…”

“Home Office colleagues believe the best measure of VAWG is prevalence, as reported through the crime survey for England and Wales, but we are working with the ONS across Government on producing headline measures overall, so a suite of metrics where we can work towards the halving of violence against women and girls in …”

“Yes, of course.”