We're honored to share the microphone with Jess Phillips MP, a tireless fighter for the rights of women and girls, as she brings her unfiltered expertise to our latest episode. Jess doesn't just talk the talk—her work with Women's Aid and in Parliament gives her a unique vantage point to challenge the systemic barriers that perpetuate domestic and sexual violence. Prepare to be confronted with hard truths as we unpack the discrepancies between societal discourse and the tangible actions needed to safeguard vulnerable individuals from harm.
We're honored to share the microphone with Jess Phillips MP, a tireless fighter for the rights of women and girls, as she brings her unfiltered expertise to our latest episode. Jess doesn't just talk the talk—her work with Women's Aid and in Parliament gives her a unique vantage point to challenge the systemic barriers that perpetuate domestic and sexual violence. Prepare to be confronted with hard truths as we unpack the discrepancies between societal discourse and the tangible actions needed to safeguard vulnerable individuals from harm.
Hi there and welcome to Killer in the Family podcast. I'm your host, claire Lachston. So before we delve into today's episode, I wanted to let you know that the podcast will be taking a bit of a break now over April Not only time to go away around Easter, also time to work on my master's assessments, which are due throughout April. So the podcast will be back on Friday, the 26th of April, with another new episode. We do have another really exciting episode today and I genuinely can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to this. We have another very special guest, an amazing, inspirational woman who I've had the honor of working alongside as she works to change things for the better.
Speaker 1:
Here is my interview with Jess Phillips MP. So I am really excited to be joined by my very special guest today, none other than Jess Phillips MP. Welcome, jess, hello, how are you Good? Thanks. Thanks so much for sparing time to talk to me. Before we get into it, I'm going to tell the listeners a little bit about you. That's all right.
Speaker 1:
So Jess is, first and foremost, the Labour MP for Birmingham, yardley, and she has been since 2015. For three years, she was shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding and in that role and all her time in Parliament has been a powerful and important voice in calling for change for victims of domestic and sexual abuse and violence. Jess has written two books, one on the life of an MP and one called Truth to Power Seven Ways to Call Time on BS, which I have my copy of right here. And before Parliament, jess worked for Women's Aid and she's pretty much dedicated her life speaking up for and alongside victims of abuse and trauma. The Times newspaper said that there was no one else at Westminster quite like Jess Phillips, and I totally agree. This is a general badass and I really appreciate you sparing time.
Speaker 2:
I've got a bit of a cult. I don't feel like a general badass today, I feel like basically like somebody who should be drinking soup.
Speaker 1:
Should be in bed drinking soup. Well, we really appreciate having you. Thank you so much. Now we are. As you know, the podcast talks about men who have killed their whole families and this sort of femicide is just part of a bigger epidemic of violence against women and girls. And so recently you read out all the names of women who've been killed by men in the past year in Parliament and think you said that 340 women have been killed since Everard was killed three years ago. And we know and we know I talk a lot on the podcast how women are killed by men all the time. The Femicide censor says every four days. And in your speech in Parliament and I'm going to link to it in the episode notes you talked about, like you know, really being tired of getting scraps and sticking plasters rather than actual change. So what is it? What is that systemic change that we need to stop women and children being killed by men?
Speaker 2:
Well, I suppose the first thing is that. So what happens is that when a terrible incident of a whole family being killed or all famous cases police officers are killed, like in Sarah Everard's case, that suddenly the sort of political system goes oh, we must care about this, and they put out like a consultation, and then they bang about how loads of people came back on the consultation, as if that in in and of itself is enough, and then they will create some both rhetorical policy change. So, post Sarah Everard, we campaigned for violence against women and girls to be considered that as part of the serious violence duty. Now it was here that that wasn't the case before, that the thing that kills people, uses more people than anything else, wasn't considered as part of the serious violence duty in the way that terrorism or knife crime had been. And obviously there's a massive crossover between knife crime and Women being used and killed, but we don't consider that crossover, incidentally. So basically then, what happens is the language changes. The language changes and we say we're all going to take this more seriously and every police force says this is a priority for us, which is a tiny thing, factor that police forces might say that. And but because the the issue of violence and abuse is a tiny fraction of it will ever cross the police's radar.
Speaker 2:
And Then you get like a sort of and and to the listener this will sound like a lot of money but really isn't when you consider it. There'll be some scheme for like five million pounds will be given to a project team for Better CCTV in the local area, or whatever it is. They come up with some oh, we're gonna do a safest streets fund and we're gonna put 40 million pounds across the country to save the streets and councils can decide what they want to spend it on. Everybody moves on. Now that is fundamentally infuriating for me, because it's so. If you just take police forces, like bear in mind that you know one in ten Victims of violence will never interact with a police force. But if we're talking about people who end up dead, obviously that does interact with a place for. So even if you just just took police forces and the systematic change that was needed in in that particular space, then why on earth are they allowed to just say it is our priority and then for nothing to change within that?
Speaker 2:
force and they might change. What they might do is they might change their, their language. They write in the annual review but the the amount of police officers in almost every police force across the country certainly urban police forces that have like a terrorism unit, like West Midlands Police, the Metropolitan Police, great Manchester Police there's sort when they say we're gonna take this as seriously as terrorism. All you've got to look at is the unit that manages Violence against women and girls, which, by the way, they don't. They don't won't have a specialist unit for that. It will be part of a unit that's for all abuse against men, women, children and they, and Even with that amount of and it will be 20% of all the crime that they get called out for. So 20% issue terrorism won't be 0.2%, and the terrorism unit will be funded and resourced to a far greater level, with loads more Tech and loads more innovation and loads Flying around the world to see what other countries are doing and all that sort of thing. And there will be global partnerships as well as local partnerships that are working on it. Why on earth shouldn't we Expect exactly the same? So, basically, the systematic change that needs to happen within police forces is that every single police force has to have a specific women's safety unit. Now I'm very delighted to say today is international women's day and the the calls for by people like me and Louise Casey called for it in her review of the Metropolitan Police in this space and that we have called for women's safety units in every single police force in the country.
Speaker 2:
Well, the police force, the West Yorkshire police force, which incidentally has a woman police in crime, who a good friend of mine, tracy Brabion they have said today they have launched that they're going to have a woman's safety unit so that that let's see how that goes and what improvements can be made.
Speaker 2:
But it won't just be that like, you can't just say you've got one and put no extra resource, no extra Innovation into exactly how the forces are going to interact. It also cannot just be police officers yeah, specialist services within those women's safety units. But that would be a systematic change and the government will come back to me and they say things like well, we can't tell police forces to have a specialist rope crisis service, and I'm like that. Imagine if your police force in like great to Manchester came and said I went up in a bother to have a terrorism unit. Do you think yeah, you honestly think, that the government Staves out like a load of rubbish? Of course they wouldn't. They would so well, we really do think you should have to have a terrorism unit, but, and as best I know, there isn't a part of the country that doesn't have women in it.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, pretty sure, pretty sure.
Speaker 2:
Even the Isle of man. That area doesn't exist. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
And I think that would be a systematic change that would be a systematic change. And that is such an important thing to talk about, isn't it? Because I think the Met Commissioner yesterday equated violence against women with terrorism, didn't he? So he's building the case for us really. So it would be really interesting like I love Tracy, so it would be really interesting to see how that goes.
Speaker 2:
So the Met Commissioner did say that, and we're a year on from the reviews that Louise Casey did into the Metropolitan Police following the killing of Sarah Everard and other cases where failures of police and criminal justice agencies so, whether it's Sarah Alina and, of course, beiber Henry and Nicole Smallman, there was quite a lot in the Metropolitan Police where police filings had been completely found to have led to the murder of somebody, whilst, of course, the perpetrators are always to blame. The police could have stopped a lot of those killings If systems had been better in place. So, whilst the Metropolitan Police Commissioner has equated it with terrorism, he hasn't put in a women's safety unit, which was one of the recommendations of the Casey review. So I look forward to him coming out and saying that that's what he's going to do.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, we'll watch that with interest. Yeah, and I think one of the things that we talk a lot about on the podcast as well is and you will see this all the time Particularly the media reaction to perpetrators from the inside that are like, hey, they were such a great guy and what a brilliant dad and it's like hang on a second, he just murdered his whole family and you're saying he was basically validating the perpetrator. Do you see that and how can we challenge that like meaningfully?
Speaker 2:
It comes. You know it's easy to slug off the media and say that they're just getting it wrong, but it comes from a fatal literally fatal in this instance Belief system about the kind of violence that leads to you killing your entire family.
Speaker 2:
The kind of violence and control that ends with murder. The idea that people lose control and, in a fit of peak, kill their entire family. That isn't what happens. That is a fundamental failure of understanding of how these murders occur. It is undoubtedly and in almost I mean at least 50% of the cases of all the women whose names I read out. Those women will have been to either health agencies, council agencies or criminal justice agencies. They're not going to be able to get their abuse for, if not the last year, many, many, many years, and nothing gets done about it, and then it leads them into a dangerous situation. But like the idea we want to believe as a society that it's not going to happen to us and that we don't know men like that, we don't know people who are currently controlling their wives and one day might murder them as a sort of protection. It's the new modern way of saying she was asking for it. She must have done something that led to her murder, Because people are more than happy to now in this post-MeToo world.
Speaker 2:
They're more than happy to say I know victims of domestic abuse. Women are way more happy to talk about the abuses that they have suffered and that's to be commended. What people don't do and have complete and utter incapability to do currently, is say that they know and love perpetrators of this violence. So, unless there's like one monster who's doing this to everybody, statistically speaking, if you know a victim, then you know a perpetrator. And the newspapers lead into about this idea that a good man lost the will. A good man lost the will and killed his whole family. And isn't this a tragedy? And it's like no, no, no, it isn't a tragedy, this and it isn't an isolated incident. That's what they always say, that, yeah, it doesn't need to be because it was an isolated incident. There isn't a killer on the loose, there was just this one man and he was only ever gonna kill these people as if their lives meant nothing. And that pisses me off, because it isn't an isolated incident. It's literally the opposite of an isolated incident. It would be a far more isolated incident for a completely random man to go into a city center and stab a load of people. That would be a completely isolated incident.
Speaker 2:
This is not isolated. This is years, if not decades in some cases, because quite a lot of the women who ended up murdered are actually over 50, over 60. That they literally have been building up for years controlling, controlling, controlling. And at the point the woman breaks free is the most dangerous moment because they lose control of that woman. So when people say, oh, he lost control and murdered someone, that is actually right, but it isn't what they mean when they say that he literally lost his ability to control, we used to, when I worked at Women's Aid, we used to call it the fuck it moment and it's really, really. That's the most scary moment, because if you've taken away all their ability to control you that they have had for decades and they've lost control, they literally go fuck it. I'm going to kill you in this circumstance and it's the most dangerous moment. But yeah, it's not isolated, it's never isolated.
Speaker 2:
Somebody doesn't start with murder. They don't just wake up one day and murder your whole family. That's just not what happens unless you are suffering. But even in these cases, even in the cases where somebody has suffered from a psychotic episode, a genuine mental health, chemical, physical issue that has caused someone the psychosis to the level that they then go about killing somebody, that wasn't the first instance of that. That was people trying to access mental health services for decades. That was no intervention for the families when they've tried to get help. And you can be completely sympathetic to somebody who has a psychotic break and kills their family because they believe that they were going to harm them. Or they believe even in those cases which are much rarer than the case is about, Even in those cases it isn't an isolated incident.
Speaker 1:
And I think that is what we need to challenge, isn't it? And what we need to change that fundamental understanding. So we have talked about a lot of really serious failing. You know, you read the names out of women that have been killed. Is there hope for change and for protection for women?
Speaker 2:
Of course, there is always hope, and actually the hope that I would lean on is that when I started doing this work two decades ago excuse me the very real attitude of society was that women were asking for it. We have massively moved on from that Now. We sometimes dress it up in different language, but we have. Fundamentally, there has been a fundamental cultural change, and the public is considerably further forward actually the policymakers. On this, the public is, by and large, in the right place, and so and the struggle for that to then be taken seriously by policymakers whether that's health service policymakers, local council policymakers, mental health services, housing, police courts that is the bit that is missing. But the more that the public care about something, the more policymakers are frightened of the public's attitude towards it, and so there is total reason to be cheerful because more people talk about this than ever before, and that will make Westminster do something.
Speaker 2:
So the Labour Party goes into the next election, for example, and one of its five pledges key missions, that is set out is to halve the incidences of violence against women and girls within a decade.
Speaker 2:
Now you know, like you, the Liberal Party, can promise what they like frankly, and the proof of the pudding is always in the eating.
Speaker 2:
But I've never gone into an election campaign as somebody who's been part of pretty much every election campaign since that was first elected where that was such a key flunk of one of the main political parties in this case, likely the one that will win when that was such a key flank of their offer to the country Like so that just even that it's made it to that level is a reason to be hopeful. What the thing? That the problem that we will always face in this is that it's such a high volume and that volume is largely women and we just don't care about women in policy as much as we care and we expect women to do free labor of keeping themselves safe or looking after their families. That is expected currently. Society expects that policy makers are just grateful that women don't kick off more frankly about the appreciate they have to do. Imagine if we all stopped like doing all the free care that we have to do the state and other you know if you think the deficit's bad.
Speaker 2:
Now, covid and nothing. You know, covid has got nothing on women stuff. So we've got to move away from our safety and security. So it's one thing that carries left on our shoulders, but moving policy makers into a space where our safety and security should be a priority of the state and it shouldn't be something that women are left to do by themselves. We wouldn't, we don't expect the nation to keep themselves safe from terrorists. Yeah, you know, like we don't go, don't go out in the streets on big events. We don't say that to people, that we don't say well, it's going to be a big event, there's probably going to be terrorism, so you probably shouldn't go. We don't do that to people, so we just got to move into that space. Do you know what? I think? That, that, that, that, that that will happen, and if it doesn't, I will just sit ranting about it, and they basically want to shut me up. More than anything else, the desire to make me be quiet by policymakers across Westminster is, is is great.
Speaker 1:
Then that is a powerful influencing tool.
Speaker 2:
I don't Sweat it. I'll sweat the asset they want me to shut up because they, you know, because essentially the patriarchal norms, that Then I'll sweat that asset whatever I love that.
Speaker 1:
Well, I feel like that's a really good place, with the reasons to be cheerful, reasons to be hopeful, to end our conversation and thank you so, so much for sparing time to talk to us, tell us about your work. I'm really like just inspire, hopefully, all the listeners to one you know, to one a day more. And yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:
Yes, oh, it is my pleasure.
Speaker 1:
The brilliant and just just great it's a wide-ranging conversation with Jess there, you know is really kind of her to give up her time to talk to us about some of those really big Systemic issues that we're facing. And it was really interesting to hear about the new women's safety unit in West York just police. So definitely going to keep an eye on that and see how it works, any impact that it has and I think also just hearing from Jess about some of those things that we've talked about before. You know, familiar side is not an isolated incident. It's always called that and the way that it's reported is really underpinned by that Fatal as she said, fatal misunderstanding of Control and abuse and why someone would take that move to kill their whole family. It's, you know, it's never that acts of rage or, you know, just lost control. There's always control there. As we know, there's always a plan and there's always quite a cold, controlled way of carrying it out from a perpetrator. So I think it was really interesting to hear her viewpoint on that. So please do get in touch with any questions or thoughts or comments. I'd really love to know what you thought about that conversation, the sort of hope that you have the reasons to be hopeful and cheerful and you know, yeah, just really interested to know what you all think. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:
This has been killer in the family podcast, written and produced by me, claire Lachston, with music from the brilliant Tom box and Pixbay. I'm taking a break now and we'll be back with another episode on Friday, the 26th of April, so please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, follow me on social media at killer in the family pod and do you let me know any stories you'd like me to cover as well. Until then, I've been Claire Lachston. This is killer in the family podcast. Until next time, take care.