Gavin Williamson
Main Page: Gavin Williamson (Conservative - Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge)Department Debates - View all Gavin Williamson's debates with the Home Office
(1 day, 17 hours ago)
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Jess Phillips
I will chair an interministerial cross-Government group next week to push through the other recommendations. Baroness Casey made 12 recommendations, but people rarely speak about any of the others. This was not her most pressing one; instead, she gave primacy to the policing-related recommendation around Operation Beaconport. As I said in my previous statement on 2 September, the work on the 216 cases that moved forward is ongoing and runs alongside this. That is where justice will be served: in our courts—if only they had not been horrendously degraded so that rape victims wait for years and years.
Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)
I think we all agree that the voices of survivors have to be at the heart of this. It is worrying and concerning when two of those survivors do not feel as if the process is properly looking after them and ensuring their voice is heard. Will the Minister commit to speaking to both Fiona Goddard and Ellie-Ann Reynolds to try and encourage and reassure them that this is a process that really will listen to their voices?
Jess Phillips
That opportunity has already been presented to them and I would be more than happy. I know one of them but not the other. That opportunity is always available, and one of them has my phone number. On the idea that I do not listen and have not been making myself available, I have tried to keep the process fiercely independent of Government intervention so that it can happen and victims can feel safe in that, but of course I feel sad that this is how it has ended. Actually, I hope that this is not how it has ended and I will commit to making sure that this is not the end. My door is always open to them.