Speeches by Phillips.

“That was one of the specific criticisms that had been made and has been worked on, and I will hand over to Gisela who actually did some of the specific work. The fundamental difference was the definition that the Government were working to and that used by police forces, which is quite a fundamental issue. I will hand …”

“My response to that is I hope that their Ministers also get scrutinised for it. It is very easy to become the face of a thing and then the expectation is—and I am sure you will have felt this in your time at the Home Office—“Oh, that is the Home Office’s responsibility.” The whole point is that the violence against wom…”

“Obviously I was not responsible for previous strategies, but more broadly, strategies in the past—and certainly ones that I have worked under as both a frontline worker and as an Opposition politician campaigning in this space—were much more focused on domestic abuse initially, and then moving into the space of violenc…”

“I have to say, funnily enough, when going through my correspondence in the car on the way down and signing it off, I thought, “Has Karren Brady taken over?” Then, when I saw it was your name at the end, I just thought that I must have read it wrong at the beginning. I apologise for that.”

“Yes, Karren Brady was excellent. As somebody who comes from an area where Birmingham City football club is, I feel I have to say that she was excellent there. The real need for a cultural shift was why I wanted the strategy to be different. A cultural shift in society is important, but it is very hard for us to ask for…”

“We take on board the criticisms that have been laid out, and other strategies and suggestions made. We also live in an environment of not just Select Committees but also, for example, the Angiolini inquiry and the IICSA review, making sure that we look at what has been suggested. I personally get very sick of people sa…”

“There is a case precedent where that is not taken into account. There was a case that was fought. I cannot remember the name of the case, but there is a case that was fought.”

“Agreed.”

“It is an evergreen issue that there are 43 different police forces and very little power to tell them exactly what they have to do on certain things. That is why we set up the national centre specifically because I do not think that what the West Midlands police does on terrorism, for example, is wildly different from …”

“I am Jess Phillips. I am the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls.”

“Yes, of course, otherwise we would not have set out to do it. You will not halve the incidence of rape unless you work very closely on the prevention of rape. The fundamental is: what makes men rape?”

“I can only apologise if people feel left out. We undertook a huge series of—I think it was 12—roundtables in the build-up to the strategy and there were 100 different organisations.”

“Yes. People are often quite keen. Other Government Departments are often keen to come along. I am like, “I’m not sure what you’re going to bring to the party,” but I am trying to come up with a way to make solar energy about violence against women and girls, so if anyone has one I am happy to hear it.”

“The strategy was published in December, and so what is it now? We are four months into the strategy publication, which has 259 commitments in it. We have a really specific cross-Government focus on 15 of those as a priority. That is not to say that others are cast by the wayside; there are expectations on the Governmen…”

“You can go for it quickly, yes. Are you all right? People forget that they also have diaries and I am not the centre of the universe.”

“That is correct.”

“I am not from the Department that deals with legal aid.”

“I agree. I find that to be a maddening truth. We digress, but part of the action plan about modern slavery is a really specific focus on the policing and the criminal charging of it, because after all these years it is still woefully low. It seems like the bar must be—there is a lot of work that needs doing on that.”

“The progress that is undertaken, from the Home Office’s perspective of what our deliverables are within the violence against women and girls strategy, is monitored entirely through my ministerial post and all of the ordinary systems. I meet with the Home Secretary every single week and discuss it with her.”

“A threat assessment is done by the NCVPP. I always used to criticise Theresa May’s naming of the HMICFRS—or whatever the millions of letters are—and then I did the same thing and gave something a silly name. It undertakes an annual threat assessment, as you might do with terrorism in this space. We were previously not …”