Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips has said that the government will consider following Australia in attempting to ban social media for under 16s. Labour will hardly be able to resist the hand-wringing campaign to do so regardless of the evidence…
Pressed by Sophy Ridge on Sky News on the government’s nervousness to pull “really really big levers” Phillips said:
“We will look at what is happening in Australia and absolutely take whatever from the world where the best practice is, it’s very very new that is happening in Australia.”
The full Violence Against Women and Girls strategy, long delayed, is due for release today. Along with a slew of other potentially problematic announcements in a final pre-Christmas rush…
All four rape gang survivors who resigned from the inquiry panel have signed a joint statement to the Home Secretary, setting out the five conditions under which they would be willing to rejoin. The first demand is the resignation of Jess Phillips as Safeguarding Minister…
“Her conduct over the last week has shown she is unfit to oversee a process that requires survivors to trust the government. Her departure would signal you are serious about accountability and changing direction.”
The other conditions are that survivors have a say in choosing the inquiry chairman, have the freedom to speak without fear, that the inquiry stays focused on the scandal and isn’t ‘diluted’, and the victim liaison lead is replaced with an independent mental health professional. Starmer is, at the time of going to pixel, standing by Phillips. Damning…
Read the full letter below…
Continue reading “Rape Gang Survivors Say They’ll Rejoin Inquiry Panel if Phillips Is Sacked”
Another punchy PMQs, with shouts of “shame” from red-faced Labour MPs. Starmer is still backing Jess Phillips despite Fiona Goddard’s calls for her to go. The inquiry is a car crash…
Rape gang survivor Fiona Goddard has resigned from the Liaison Panel of the Home Office’s inquiry. Which still doesn’t have a chairman…
Goddard attacked proposals to install former police chief Jim Gamble and social worker Annie Hudson:
“One has a background in police and the other, a social worker. The very two services that contributed most to the cover-up of the national mass rape and trafficking of children. This is a disturbing conflict of interest, and I fear the lack of trust in services from years of failings and corruption will have a negative impact in survivor engagement with this inquiry.”
Goddard attacked the entire process of Labour’s inquiry – overseen in part by Jess Phillips – so far:
“The dynamics of this inquiry, including potential chairs and progress, should have been conducted openly and honestly by the Government, and survivors should have had the choice to voice their opinions if they decided to.
Instead, the secretive conduct and conditions imposed on survivors has led to a toxic, fearful environment, and there is a high risk of people feeling silenced all over again.
As such, I have made the difficult decision to leave the Victims/Survivor Liaison Panel, and not continue with the meetings this week.”
Labour’s inquiry falling apart before it has even been set up…
Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips admitted that the UK’s main domestic abuse screening tool “doesn’t work” but that “we have to make the very best of the system that we have”. So much for ‘we will half domestic violence against women’…
Police and social services mainly use a Dash questionnaire to assess risk of domestic abuse, though in 2022, academics from Manchester and Seville found 96% of victims later deemed “high risk” were first marked only “standard” or “medium” by Dash. According to FOIs by the BBC, more than half of UK police services still use the tool…
Jess Phillips said:
“Until I can replace it with something that does [work] we have to make the very best of the system that we have. Any risk assessment tool is only as good as the person who is using it. The grading system won’t immediately protect you.”
Phillips also delayed Labour’s much-touted Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy and still hasn’t said when she will appoint a rape gang inquiry chairman. Add this to the list of problems for the ‘safeguarding’ minister…
Downing Street has clearly decided to keep the Farage Savile row going for as long as they can. Jess Phillips is the latest Labour minister to take up the mantle this morning…
Writing in the Times the Home Office minister said of the Online Safety Act:
“Farage said it’s the biggest threat to freedom of speech in our lifetimes. My colleague Peter Kyle said he was siding with modern-day Jimmy Saviles preying on children online.”
She brought up the case of internet paedophile Alexander McCartney who posed as a teenager to abuse and blackmail children: “That’s why the Online Safety Act exists — to try to provide that basic minimum of protection and make it harder for paedophiles to prey on children at will. And we can’t afford to wait.” That’s why Commons speeches and political news stories should be blocked from the internet…
Phillips claimed Farage doesn’t support child safety because it generates “no clicks for his monetised social media accounts. But I do… I worry about what it means now and what it will mean when boys reared on a diet of ultraviolent online child abuse are adult men having children of their own. I can’t ignore that, neither can Peter Kyle and, most importantly, nor can millions of parents across the country.” The tech-savvy kids all have VPNs and have entered into an even less regulated internet than it was before. Labour has so far resorted to begging people not to use the privacy software – it may not be long before it goes further…
Red Wall Labour backbencher Jonathan Brash told GB News that Starmer should resign:
“I’m completely fed up about it, and I think it’s got to the point now where I genuinely think that, as far as the Prime Minister is concerned, it’s not a case of if, it’s when.”