Speeches by Phillips.

“I am going to turn to Gisela.”

“We have promised to do regular updates annually, and no doubt some of that will include issues that cover Northern Ireland, anything to do with online and how we know whether that is affecting the women of Northern Ireland. I have no doubt that that will form part of the data. Also, Northern Ireland women are included …”

“I am happy to take advice. I am not sure I have ever not been overbearing in my entire life, but I will give it a whirl. It is funny, isn’t it? I have definitely been overbearing on other Government Departments, to Mike’s question earlier. I have definitely been overbearing and intolerable at certain points. On the dev…”

“In 2019 we lived in a slightly different time. Thanks to many good people campaigning, the laws have changed in Northern Ireland with regard to abortion and the freedom of women regarding their own reproductive rights. That 2019 report by the UN was almost certainly talking about the fracture between the UK and Norther…”

“You can amend my law and put in eBay. The responsibility sits with the tech companies and the state. How successful have we been? It is an interesting question because I would always want more. However, when I travel to other parts of the world or speak to our counterparts in other parts of the world, you get a ticker …”

“Genuinely, if it were me, I am a maximalist. Don’t get me started. I would switch the internet off, apart from Vinted. That is not a policy of the Government. I could not live without Vinted, though.”

“I will be down in Devon and Cornwall next week for both business and pleasure—I have turned business into a bit of pleasure as the recess comes along. I would like to thank Airbnb for that. [Laughter.] The issue of need and how we commission services in rural areas has never been properly considered. On the basis of a …”

“It needs updating all the time and it is updated. We have the power to update it. You can change the priority offences within the Online Safety Act already, and the Government have sought to do that on various different issues around naked images—what used to be called revenge porn; unsolicited, unwanted, non-consensua…”

“You are welcome.”

“The vast majority of the violence against women and girls strategy is England and Wales, and even much of it is just England as well, because of the devolved nations. There are bits that are not reserved, so issues around immigration. One huge part of the strategy is around the online space and the safety of women onli…”

“I could not say whether I see a higher level of it in Northern Ireland, but I have not noted a place in the world where it does not exist. That is why you have to do two things and that is why the strategy sets out to do two things, one that will have a very direct impact on Northern Ireland and one on which Northern I…”

“On the links between online and offline violence against women and girls, the first thing I would say is that you do not need to prove there is a link to know that, for example, child abuse online is child abuse. It is no less of an abuse. The most famous case of this was a case in Northern Ireland. There was a perpetr…”

“Yes, a lot of this is devolved.”

“As somebody with two children, neither of whom are children, I have ensured child-to-parent violence absolutely features in the violence against women and girls strategy. It was one of the biggest calls from the engagement that we did prior to writing the strategy. Certainly, over the years, I have seen a growing call …”

“My and the Government’s assessment of violence against women and girls is that it is a national emergency. Specifically in relation to Northern Ireland, the data shows us that the rates of femicide—murder and domestic homicide—are higher there than not just other parts of the United Kingdom but quite a lot of the world…”

“No is the answer to that question. Prior to this, the crime survey for England and Wales looked at domestic abuse, sexual violence and stalking. We have asked the ONS to do a piece of work that puts violence against women and girls into a category of all of those things together, so that it can be monitored. The crime …”

“Of course. I did not mean to exclude Somerset or anywhere else, rural or otherwise. I would gladly meet the hon. Gentleman—I would gladly meet anybody. I do not wish to cause him offence, but I would dance with the devil to make women and children safer, so I would happily meet him to talk about Somerset. I will conclu…”

“The datasets are different and the overall strategy is assessed on the crime survey for England and Wales. I stress that it is of England. This is not necessarily even a devolved issue. It is that different nations ask different questions for their own needs, so I suppose that that is about devolution. I also recognise…”

“I absolutely agree. When I was running refuge accommodation, we were moving from the era of everybody living in communal refuges to a new era of people needing separate accommodation. Some of that was about the rules on safeguarding with regard to which children could and could not live together, and about boys over th…”

“Greedy.”