Jess Phillips appointed a minister to focus on tackling violence against women and girls and domestic violence.

[IwantToRetire]

Jess Phillips has been appointed to the Labour government as a minister, focusing on tackling violence against women and girls and domestic violence.

The Labour MP has been a vocal campaigner on the subject, and has become known for reading out a list of all the women killed by men in the UK every year on International Women's Day in parliament.

Ms Phillips had the role of shadow domestic violence and safeguarding minister from 2020 to 2023 under Sir Keir Starmer but resigned over the party's stance on the Middle East conflict in November.

She was one of 56 Labour MPs - including eight frontbenchers - to vote in favour of an SNP motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East.

This defied the Labour whip, and so Ms Phillips had to step aside.

More ... https://news.sky.com/story/jess-phillips-made-minister-following-frontbench-resignation-over-middle-east-13175726

As someone said here: "whatever"

It's not about arguing about opinions. That's the point! The one you are missing.

It's about removing opinions of definitions of law so that everyone knows where they stand, there is absolute clarity and no one is disadvantaged by not having access to a good lawyer or a decent prosecution from the CPS.

Law can't be about opinions. It needs to be absolutely and in stone. Otherwise people fall foul of the law because no one actually manages to understand the law or because the law is different depending on the day of the week and the political views of who handles your case.

Good law - justice - is based on the principle that the public feel it is fair and treats everyone equally and without prejudice.

The second you lose that clarity the law becomes open to abuse and the perceptions of those holding power not the principles of fairness which disregard status and identity in society.

For the benefit of the lurkers.

It is not for the law to have opinions or multiple positions. It is for the law to have singular definitions and singular positions.

We refer to case law to clarify in certain situations, but establishing case law is expensive, time-consuming and can lead to injustice where people do not have the ability to establish case law.

Thus we ask law makers to avoid this situation and to carefully consider definitions when making law so we don't get into a right pickle of arguing for example 'what is a woman?'

What is depressing is when law makers (that's an MP btw) don't recognise or understand the importance of this.

Especially when their workplace speciality was (checks notes) human rights and law

Further to this we now have a situation with three separate individuals having oversight over shared ground.

The last time we had this situation was when Theresa May had the Brexit Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the International Trade Secretary. It descended into something of a terf war (sic) with David Davis, Liam Fox and Boris Johnson having a bit of a pissing contest because there was no clear control over certain areas and all three felt the other two were stepping on their toes because of the lack of where their jurisdiction began and where it ended. Then it was ultimately up to the PM to make the decision taking it out of their control anyway but for them to carry the can and responsibility at the same time even though this was taken from them.

My point being that we've now got three women, who perhaps can work together better than the above mentioned Tories. But if there isn't a clear hierarchy none actually have much power because the PM will always make the final decision but he has no less than three women to act as a buffer that he can defer to and say 'oh well it's their area not mine' or to set up as a fall guy (sorry should that be girl).

I'm not convinced that having a situation where jokes about light bulbs are appropriate, makes for good lawmaking.

Don't forget we have a bunch of committees which sit to hold cross party discussions on key subjects. We have the women and equalities select committee to have these type of discussions. So why are we effectively creating another sub committee to in effect discuss much of the same things?

It makes no practical sense. May's failing was her inability to resolve differences and her approach of giving roles which overlapped played a major part in the problem.

So I'm curious about this and whether this is essentially making a similar mistake which is only going to result in a headache further down the line, because Starmer doesn't want to go too near the problem himself. (May wanted it to appear that Brexiteers were in charge of Brexit and dispel the issue of her being a remainder by creating distance).

Further to this we now have a situation with three separate individuals having oversight over shared ground.
Yes.
If nothing else it shows how Starmer wants to avoid this

I've come back to this some hours since I last read it, hoping we had a thread back about the good and bad bits of this new political appointment.

And should add which I dont think I did last night shows that whether as a vanity project of because they really care, Labour have made violence against women an issue important enough to have a Minister.

Someone said:

Why is that your first takeaway from this, rather than focussing on addressing male violence so that there is no need for support services anyway?

Someone up thread gave a really serious response to this, but I was being flip, because on one level Labour is a joke with Starmer flip flopping, having someone with overall responsibility who is Labour but does recognise that on this issue women (biological) only services are essential.

And if that believe doesn't exist then they shouldn't have this role. Added to which as the violence is the extreme presentation of the ruling sex class men exploiting, discriminating and being violent towards the sex class of women.

And unless you have the understanding you cant begin to challenge why men are so easily able to be violent toward women.

And:

What's the deal with Ayesha Hazarika? Has she also been given a job?

Well as the woman who was elevated to the HoL for being one of the authors of the SSE in the EA, which implicitly implies that "for all purposes" TW are "legal" women, which is why the SSE had to be written. She is very proud of this.

So let's not give Labour any ideas, as for all we know she may be promoted to be Women's Tsar and have the triple headed ministers of women reporting to her.

(She is a prime example of why recently graduated students should not be be allowed to be eager apparatchiks for MPs let alone PMs, and worse still be delegated to help amend the Parliamentary Bills.)

It's going to take them years to figure out what the problem is never mind a resolution.

They have men at the front of the queue ahead of women, with their case law and objections blocking any guidance that could give weight to providers.

Look how they treated Baroness Kishwar when she spoke up and drafted guidance. They will do the same to Labour ministers and MPs.

Anything they say about using the exemptions has to be heard in this context.

I'm sure I heard Wes Streeting mentioning a consultation on reform of the GRA so we could well be back on that merry go round again in the next year.

It's going to be down to the public and to women's groups to object again. The labour appointments are all already useful idiots for the reform lobby and the messed up status quo which defaults to men doing what they want.

Knowing what a woman is is ONE requirement of being a feminist; it is not THE ONLY requirement of being a feminist.

Jess Phillips has always struck me as somebody who speaks out of both sides of her mouth. This is probably a good thing as her mouth produces words at a far greater rate than her brain produces thoughts.

Having got the snipery out of the way, JP has had an unbending commitment to addressing VAWG and I think we should give her some space.

I was going to say something but having read the last few pages, I've lost the will to live. Toothbrushes for heaven's sake.

Jess has got a job which is going to reveal both her true colours and her competence. A loud mouth won't be enough, she now has power so she'll be judged on her achievements. I truly hope she exceeds my expectations

Not sure how significant this is, but as far as I can tell, and I've searched .gov.uk using different wording, this VAWG Minister post has not been formally announced.

I was looking to see what the official post remit was.

So if anyone comes across it can your post the link?

Thanks

They were talking about VAWG on R4 this morning at about 8.25 but I switched on half way through so don't know if it was mentioned. Jess Phillips was definitely mentioned. I think it was Dan Jarvis being interviewed (edit for clarity).

@Imnobody4 "Jess has got a job which is going to reveal both her true colours and her competence"

Her competence as a minister, yes. I think her true colours are pretty clear.

Has she spoken yet about the crossbow murders of those three women? It’s sickening the violence women endure.

https://news.sky.com/story/jess-phillips-made-minister-following-frontbench-resignation-over-middle-east-13175726

Her title is "parliamentary under secretary of state in the home office"
https://x.com/jessphillips/status/1810788712206213433

Yes, on her twitter there are comments about it

As part of one of my degrees, I studied law in a couple of areas relevant to this topic and the one thing all of my lecturers and tutors hammered into us is that definitions must be precise or they are useless. The law requires precision to work properly otherwise you’re relying on judges’ interpretations of what they think the law means. When it comes to GRA 2004 and EA 2010 there are imprecisions in the legislation that are causing difficulties in implementation and widely differing judicial interpretations. If legislators want a certain thing to happen they must be precise (and realistic) in the drafting of legislation otherwise they cause confusion which can prevent the law working in practice/achieving the intended aims.

As for Jess Phillips, her career in parliament to date has left me unsure as to what her stance is on many issues so I am ambivalent but hopeful regarding her appointment. Also, whether she can achieve anything or not depends on the attitudes of other ministers - will they lend her legal support, financial support, allow her to critique the work of their departments?

The importance of clarity cannot be under-estimated when it comes to law, to governance or any situation in which critical evaluation and judgement is required.

1)"Clarity is a “gateway” standard. If a statement is unclear, one cannot determine whether it is accurate or relevant. In fact, it is impossible to tell anything about a statement without knowing what it is saying.

2)The first and most important step in clear and critical thinking, is about understanding the issue, problem, goal, or objective.If you're not clear, you risk solving the wrong problem.

3)Clarity is an important standard of critical thought. Clarity of communication is one aspect of this. We must be clear in how we communicate our thoughts, beliefs, and reasons for those beliefs.

4)Careful attention to language is essential here. For example, when we talk about morality, one person may have in mind the conventional morality of a particular community, while another may be thinking of certain transcultural standards of morality.

5)Defining our terms can greatly aid us in the quest for clarity.
Clarity of thought is important as well; this means that we clearly understand what we believe, and why we believe it.

6)Consistency is a key aspect of critical thinking. Our beliefs should be consistent. We shouldn’t hold beliefs that are contradictory. If we find that we do hold contradictory beliefs, then one or both of those beliefs are false. This is a logical inconsistency.

7)if you can’t say it clearly you don’t understand it yourself.” Clarity and comprehension go hand in hand"

Just to repeat, only 2 news outlets have reported her having the title of Minister to tackle VAWG (which the OP makes clear is the source of this story).

So it is very strange that this has not been formally announce on .gov.uk which is the resource for Government announcements. So that whether you are a private individual or an institution or whatever, you check who the Government says who is responsible for what.

I wonder if the media jumped the gun, or got it wrong, ie that her particular remit will be VAWG. And it never was a Ministerial appointment.

Was thinking I might email her office!

To the contrary, MRAs love it when we stop saying "men" and instead say "perpetrators". It lets them pretend that battery, murder, and rape are done by both sexes to the same extent and fuels their "both are just as bad" narrative.

I'm sure I heard Wes Streeting mentioning a consultation on reform of the GRA so we could well be back on that merry go round again in the next year.

We should have a legal limit on how often the Govt can hold a consultation on the same issue of once per decade.

I've struggled with infertility. I don't ovulate. That makes me atypical. My female body is designed to work in a particular way, but doesn't do the job it was intended to do. The batshit questioning that this makes me somehow not a woman would be hilarious, if I wasn't aware that some activists either take it seriously or pretend to.

Are you suggesting that a human who is born deaf, for example, is something less of a human? That sort of nth degree is the logical conclusion of your entirely illogical fallacy.

Trans women do not get pregnant. I'd have thought that would be patently obvious.

The world has certainly moved on from the inspid so-called 'third wave'. #MeToo at the very least should have been evidence of that much. Their bleating protestations of women 'gate keeping' feminism couldn't even have been possible without the very difficult progress - won at significant personal cost and in some cases a fight to the death - achieved by the first and second waves. And so has the derisive attempt of some theorists in that vein to redefine what a woman is, without consulting other women or seeking their express consent.

The irony.

Not having a clear definition of "woman" and "man" means that judges will struggle apply misogyny as an aggravating factor when applying sentence guidelines to determine a sentence, should misogyny become a hate crime category, in the cases outlined. This prevents such hate crime legislation from helping women and could be used against transmen to increase their sentences unduly.

A book called "Normal Life" by a US transman activist lawyer called Dean Spade has, in its introduction, a case study of a transman Jim who was placed in a male prison and predictably harassed by the male inmates, then refused a transfer to the female estate because the judge took the view that if you say you're a man, you get treated as a man. This is an example of a time when defining women as female in law would have rightly helped a transman by forcing that judge to allocate Jim to the correct prison for Jim's sex.

Leaving the definition of "woman" open to interpretation in the UK will lead to similar abuses of women here.