Jess Phillip's resignation letter

[Corianda]

Jess Phillips has had a lot of flack on here but I heard on the radio what she said in her resignation letter
This is a section --
Over a year ago I presented solutions, long worked on by brilliant civil servants that would end the ability for children in the UK to take naked images of themselves. 91% of online child sex abuse is self-generated by children groomed, tricked and exploited in to abuse. The technology exists to stop children being able to take naked images of themselves. We could make this possible on every phone and device in the country. We could stop this abuse. It has taken me a year to get you to agree to even threaten to legislate in this space. Not legislate, just threaten. This is the definition of incremental change. Nothing bold about it. The announcement was meant to be in March, I’m still on a promise this will happen in June, I’ve given up believing it. How many children were left without a safety net in the time we dilly dallied and worried about tech bosses?
Taken from here --
https://leftfootforward.org/2026/05/jess-phillips-resigns-from-government-read-her-resignation-letter-in-full/

This does seem an example of Starmer's failings to me.
I haven't seen mention of it elsewhere on MN
I don't want to argue about her just thought this was interesting politically.

Did she mention this at all for example in PMQ's?

Yes she’s laying bare the mechanics of government. Appoint an MP to a post, give them civil servants and assistants, get a report and then sit on it.
Then have a big argument about who should be leader.
I don’t like Jess Phillips, but I appreciate the statements she made here.
Not looking good for a proper Inquiry into the grooming gangs is it?

I thought it was the opposition that quizzed the PM in PMQs

She was defending the govt last month.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2026-03-23/debates/AC0290C3-44BD-493A-BD6C-D0224D508FF0/details

'The Government have an ambitious programme to reform and improve how child exploitation is tackled. We are introducing a new offence of child criminal exploitation, establishing the independent inquiry into grooming gangs and the national policing operation, and expanding programmes to improve support to child victims of exploitation and trafficking.'

I'm not a huge fan of hers but she does seem like a woman who wants to get shit done, and I can feel her frustration at the endless dithering and delay over decisions that would genuinely make people's lives better and safer

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2026-01-27/debates/D009F2D7-3DB9-4659-A2B4-6DD6030C5E33/details

'We will not stop this just by looking at the issue of new AI. There is an issue with where our children can go and who has access to them. I agree with the hon. Lady’s sentiment. We have to make sure that we get this right. Even with the 10 years of work on the Online Safety Act, and with the level of detail and, I have to say, the arguments that went into it, it still has all the gaps that we are talking about, so we need to make sure we get this right and legislate in a way that can be agile for the future. That is why I think the Government need to take the time—not too much time, I agree—to make sure we do that.'

The EU Online Safety Act means I was stopped from seeing a picture of Mary Poppins drinking tea a few weeks back. I'd say they are not getting it right! To have to use a VPN to look at Mary Poppins, literally drinking a cup of tea...is batshit.

This is the paragraph before the one quoted above by ArabellaScott - it seems an interesting debate

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2026-01-27/debates/D009F2D7-3DB9-4659-A2B4-6DD6030C5E33/details

There is a raft of other legislation that we are putting through and that we hope will shift the dial. Obviously, in the violence against women and girls strategy, we have made a very clear commitment to ensuring that we make it impossible for children to take and share naked images of themselves—we will make it impossible for them to do that. My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Lola McEvoy) and others talked about children being taken from social media and on to other platforms. I have to say that encrypted spaces are the most dangerous for child abuse imagery. But to the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire, who was talking about that, I say this: 91% of all child sexual abuse images are self-made; they are made by children themselves. People have groomed them—exploited them—to make those images. It may be their peers.

I'm sorry but I can't take this seriously. Too many paedophiles still walk away from court with a slapped wrist, including those that actually rape. They need to start there instead of faffing around with tech and AI.

Stopping children sending photos of themselves would surely reduce opportunities for paedophiles

Also live paedophilia is a thing now with westerners buying it online from poor countries her attempt to legislate the above could be a step towards controlling that

This is all so depressing. It must be so frustrating working on all of this and nothing gets actioned.

Yes all the effort into making new offences is pointless when the existing ones are barely enforced.

Is it made clear how this technological feat is to be achieved? I can't imagine.

Jess Philips is a force for good.
I've read listened to the audiobook of her book "Lets be Honest" and found it to be excellent and informative, very much worthwhile.

Has anyone disagreed ?

I find her very inconsistent and quite anti women in some ways while doing some good things for women.

Was her book honest about her fawning interview with writer of sexually explicit ‘children’s’ books ’Juno’ Dawson, or her shenanigans around the rape gangs inquiry which may or may not have been driven by her unwillingness to rock the boat in her high percentage Muslim constituency?

The publicity stunt she pulled by adding a boys name to the list of murdered women she reads out in Parliament was unforgivable imo.

The simplest way to prevent children generating 91% of online child sex abuse is not to give them smartphones, and not to give them 24/7 unsupervised access to any online communication.

Non-smartphones do everything a mobile phone needs to do for a child, and not having cameras, they don't enable taking and sending sexualised images.

It's not down to Jess Phillips, it's not down to government policy, it's not down to the ethics of the Tech Bros, it's down to not giving complex expensive pieces of technology to children, some as young as 7, who do not have the maturity to handle the technology safely.

Every day and every night children are put in danger, at risk, groomed or in some really tragic cases driven to taking their own lives due to unsupervised online activity, on devices that are not designed for, and were never intended for children to use.

Sorry to derail from Jess Phillips's resignation letter, but when she says
The technology exists to stop children being able to take naked images of themselves
the point needs to be made that the technology that can 'stop children being able to take naked images of themselves' does indeed exist - non-smartphones are easily available, from about £30.