Speeches by Phillips.

“That is correct.”

“The centre’s job is not to deliver the Government’s VAWG strategy. It is part of the Government delivering the VAWG strategy. It is headed up by Helen Millichap. She was on the Terrace at an event last night. The centre’s job is to train and standardise because, as you have identified, there are 43 different forces wit…”

“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…”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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 …”

“When the safer streets mission board chooses that it is focusing on VAWG, VAWG has absolutely been discussed there.”

“I also have their phone numbers.”

“I have attended one where that was the case. VAWG is only one part of the overarching mission of the Home Office’s safer streets mission.”

“Yes. We report to No. 10. The Prime Minister takes a very keen interest in it. He has held a series of Cabinet-level meetings—of which there is one this week—where he gets the relevant Cabinet Secretaries from the different Government Departments and talks to them about progress against the strategy.”

“No, it would have doubled. The number of reported rapes would have doubled; the number of rapes would have halved. That is why the basis for the metric that we are measuring is not based on reported crime figures, because in violence against women and girls reported crime figures, while an important measure, are comple…”

“I would like to stress that I am not the whole of it.”

“We agreed as the inter-ministerial group that we have to focus on the 15 most cross-Government and manifesto commitments in the violence against women and girls strategy. We work as that group on the progress of those, and different Government Departments are expected to bring to that group, and prior to that group, th…”

“A bit like undertaking a risk assessment, I would say that the risk is dynamic and changing. I would have sat before you—and I almost certainly have—and had a relatively dim view, for example, of the Department of Health and Social Care and its willingness to make a cultural change to understand that violence against w…”

“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.”

“One of the big things campaigned for by those who represent migrant women was the need for a firewall between immigration services and policing. It was the subject of a super-complaint in which one of my own constituents was involved—it is always good to go into a Department that you have taken legal action against. Th…”