Phillips criticises Tories for focusing largely on threat from migrants in official response to VAWG plan
In response to Lam (see 1.02pm), Phillips said that she agreed that data collection about these crimes has not been good enough.
She said the government was increasing the number of foreign offenders being deported.
But she suggested Lam was ignoring the main problem.
What I would also say to [Lam] is, if the only crime that I had to concern myself with halving was that was committed by people who arrive in our country, my job would be considerably easier because the vast majority of the data that I am talking about is around people who were born in our country abusing other people who were born in our country.
From every culture, from every creed, I have yet to come across any community where violence against women and girls does not happen.
Lam gave the official Tory response to the VAWG announcement when she replied in the Commons to Phillips’ statement. Lam devoted almost all of her time to talking about the alleged risk to migrants posed by migrants.
Key events
Alison McGovern confirms councils affected by reorganisation will again be allowed to postpone elections
Alison McGovern, the local government minister, has confirmed that the government will let councils affected by local government reorganisation to postpone elections for another year.
At the start of this year the government announced that council elections planned for East Sussex, West Sussex, Essex, Thurrock, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Norfolk, Suffolk and Surrey would be delayed for 12 months, until 2026, because of the council reorganisation.
Two weeks ago it announced that four elections to new mayoral authorities, originally planned for next May, were also being delayed.
Today, in a statement to MPs, McGovern said an increasing number of councils were expressing concerns about “time and energy” that they would have to spend running elections to bodies that would not last for long anyway. Postponement would “free up resources to be concentrated on local government reorganisation and the delivery of good services”, she said.
McGovern said, as a result, the government has opened a consultation with councils on this issue. If councils want elections to go ahead, they will. But if councils ask for a delay, the government will be minded to allow it, she said.
The consultation will run until 15 January.
According to a statement from Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, there are 204 councils across 21 areas undergoing reorganisation and 63 of these councils are scheduled to hold elections in May 2026. They have all been given the option of postponement.
Sky News is reporting that this decision is likely to result in elections in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and East and West Sussex being postponed for another year until 2027.
Even though these are county councils controlled by the Conservative party, James Cleverly, the shadow housing secretary, complained that this was a decision that would benefit the Labour party. He said:
Labour are scared of the voters. They thought they could completely overhaul local government and stack the deck in their favour. They were wrong. Earlier this month, Labour cancelled mayoral elections and now they are at it again with council elections, fiddling the democratic process to serve their own political interests.
Victoria Atkins, the shadow environment secretary, has criticised the government’s response to the publication of the Batters report about farming profitability. (See 12.33pm.) She said:
In her report, Baroness Batters admits that the farming sector is “bewildered and frightened of what might lay ahead” because of the vindictive family farm and family business taxes. It’s no wonder that the government have buried this report until after their disastrous Benefits Street budget, and sneaked it out on the last day of term.
Instead of dealing with “the single biggest issue” facing the industry, the government’s only response today is to create yet another quango – the very last thing that farmers need.
What Katie Lam told MPs about why she wants debate about ‘whether mass migration making [VAWG] problem worse’
Here is an extract from what Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister, said when she was responding to Jess Phillips’ Commons statement about the long-awaited VAWG plan. It is interesting because it shows the extent to which being anti-immigration has become an obsession for the party (which this year has been overtaken in popularity on the right by Reform UK). Lam, of course, is the MP who provoked controversy earlier this year for saying that legally settled families should be deported in part to ensure the UK is mostly “culturally coherent”.
Lam started by talking about measures taken by the previous Conservative government to improve the way rape cases are prosecuted, and welcomed measures in the Labour strategy that, she said, built on this work, such as the plan for specialist rape teams in police forces.
Then she swiftly moved on to the topic that took up most of her five-minute speech – the threat supposedly posed by migrants.
She said:
Truly protecting women and girls demands that we have difficult and sometimes awkward conversations, conversations about sex and consent, about private lives and criminality in the home, and about who is committing these crimes and why.
Relationships between men and women, relationships between parents and children are delicate, particular, and shaped by longstanding norms and beliefs.
Not every country and culture in the world believes, as we do, that women are equal to men with personal, bodily and sexual autonomy.
And when people from those countries and cultures come here, this can be dangerous.
Do not take my word for it. The defence counsel for Israr Niazal, an Afghan asylum seeker convicted of raping a 15-year-old girl, argued that Niazal did not understand the age of consent, or the concept of consent more broadly, because no such consent exists in Afghanistan.
If we cannot be honest about this, we will fail to achieve the first of this strategy’s goals – preventing men and boys from becoming abusers.
Lam went on to say that, despite repeated requests from the Tories, the government has yet to publish comprehensive data on crime committed by migrants. She said what data is available suggests “shocking variations in crime rates by nationality and immigration status”.
She went on:
According to data from the Ministry of Justice, foreign nationals make up a third of all convictions for sexual assaults against women, despite making up between 11 and 12% of the population.
Afghans and Eritreans, the nationalities which made up the largest number of boat crossings this year, are more than 20 times more likely to be convicted for sexual offences as British nationals.
Each and every case of sexual assault is wrong. Perpetrators must face the full force of the law, regardless of nationality, and it remains the case that statistically, the most dangerous place for women to be is in her own home.
But we must be able to have an informed and honest debate about whether mass migration is making this problem worse, particularly when a large number of recent migrants come here from countries where attitudes to women are very different from our own.
Lam ended by quoting a recent article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, a BMJ academic journal, criticising the global campaign against female genital mutilation. She suggested this was an example of how immigration was leading to harmful ideas becoming acceptable in the UK.
Lam was right to say that the data relating to crime levels by immigration status is incomplete. But some of the figures she was quoting were misleading. Haroon Siddique and Michael Goodier explain why in this recent Guardian article.
The Migration Observatory also published a recent report on this topic. It concluded:
Overall, rates of incarceration and criminal convictions are broadly similar for foreign and British nationals. When controlling for age and sex, the share of non-citizens who are incarcerated is lower than among Brits. The available data is not yet sufficient to conduct the same analysis for convictions, although the Migration Observatory has requested the relevant data from MoJ.
Children’s commissioner says she’s ‘deeply concerned’ VAWG plan does not do enough to protect girls under 16
Rachel de Souza, the children’s commission, has issued this statement about the VAWG plan. While she welcomes many elements of it, she says she is “deeply concerned” that it does not contain enough measures to protect girls under the age of 16. She says:
This strategy is an important step in our shared ambition to end violence against women and girls. I’m pleased to see many of my recommendations included, especially a new network of ‘Child Houses’ [see 10.01am], which are hugely valuable services bringing highly skilled professionals together under one roof to care for child victims of abuse and give them a voice.
I’m also delighted to see a move to ban nudification tools as I have pushed for, which strip people naked in images against their will. [See 1.37pm.] There is simply no reason for these tools to exist and I’m grateful to the government for responding decisively to this growing threat in children’s lives.
The focus on evidence-based relationships education that addresses the realities of teenagers’ lives today is welcome, as is the move to prioritise better training for teachers and experts to shape children’s views early on – but this must be done with sensitivity, without demonising young boys or pitting them against girls.
However, I remain deeply concerned that too much of this strategy will only protect girls who are 16 or over. We need robust data measures to see if the strategy is working, but this cannot be at the expense of listening and responding to the risks facing every girl from a young age.
Phillips says ‘nudification’ tools that create fake, nude pictures of real people without permission to be banned
In her opening statement to MPs, Phillips said that nudification tools are going to be banned. The Home Office has set out more detail on this in a news release.
More women and girls will be protected from deepfake abuse as new laws will ban ‘nudification’ tools that use generative AI to turn images of real people into fake nude pictures and videos without their permission.
As part of the government’s strategy to tackle violence against women and girls, ministers have pledged to make it impossible for children in the UK to take, share or view a nude image using their phones. The government will join forces with tech companies so we can work together to make this a reality and better protect young people from grooming, extortion, bullying, harassment and sexual abuse …
The government will work with tech companies to develop solutions to image based abuse, expanding on technology already being implemented by British safety tech company Safe To Net, and nudity detection filters already on smartphones …
The new legislation will allow the police to target the firms and individuals who design and supply these [nudification] tools.
Worryingly, these apps allow users to strip clothes, and produce intimate videos without the consent of those depicted – with devastating and long-lasting consequences to victims. Highly realistic, this technology has led to a scourge of financially motivated sexual extortion and even suicide in some cases. In Spain, the town of Almendralejo was devastated after several perpetrators used these apps to create nude images of twenty children walking to school.
Government has also already legislated to criminalise the creation of non-consensual sexual deepfakes, ensuring that offenders face the appropriate punishments for this atrocious harm.
Nick Timothy (Con) asks Phillips to confirm that the crimes of the rape gangs were racially motivated.
Phillips says she cannot comment on particularly cases. But the government is making grooming an aggravated offence, she says.
But she says she accepts that women were targeted for being white, working-class girls.
In the Commons Lizzi Collinge (Lab) says she was surprised to hear Katie Lam tell MPs that in Britain people understand the concept of consent. (See 12.52pm.) Every day there are examples of British men not respecting the concept of consent, she says.
Home Office publishes VAWG plan
The Home Office has now published the VAWG plan. It comes in two parts – the strategy, and the action plan.
Phillips criticises Tories for focusing largely on threat from migrants in official response to VAWG plan
In response to Lam (see 1.02pm), Phillips said that she agreed that data collection about these crimes has not been good enough.
She said the government was increasing the number of foreign offenders being deported.
But she suggested Lam was ignoring the main problem.
What I would also say to [Lam] is, if the only crime that I had to concern myself with halving was that was committed by people who arrive in our country, my job would be considerably easier because the vast majority of the data that I am talking about is around people who were born in our country abusing other people who were born in our country.
From every culture, from every creed, I have yet to come across any community where violence against women and girls does not happen.
Lam gave the official Tory response to the VAWG announcement when she replied in the Commons to Phillips’ statement. Lam devoted almost all of her time to talking about the alleged risk to migrants posed by migrants.
Katie Lam suggests migration has increased risk to women as she gives Tory response to VAWG statement
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister, is responding on behalf of the Tories.
She says truly protecting women and girls will involve difficult conversations.
Not every culture in the world believes that women are equal to men, she says.
And when those cultures come to this country, that can cause a problem.
She quotes what was said in court by the defence when an Afghan sex offender was being tried. The court was told that the defendant did not understand the concept of consent.
She claims that the government has not published full data on crime as committed by people from different nationalities, and by immigration status. She says there are “shocking” variations by nationality.
She calls for a debate on whether mass migration is making the situation worse.
