Russell Brand, David Walliams and the legacy of MeToo - The News Agents

I often think of anal as a momentary lack of respect. Sometimes, and you know we're all guilty of it, I commit momentary acts of a lack of respect. So far I've avoided anally any but 53% of child sexual abuse that was reported the year before last. The age of the perpetrator was between the age of 10 and 17. Do you think the Online Safety Act has made any difference? The one good thing about the Online Safety Act is it has reduced the access, I mean, to a degree of young people to pornography. The News Agents Podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. All right. This is a global production. This has been the week which has shaken the British entertainment industry. It's a week where some of the most well-known faces in British entertainment have either gone to prison for rape or been accused of sexual predation. It's the sort of week where you need to sit back and take stock. Ask how this might have come to be. Ask whether anything has really changed. There could be no better person to do that with than Jess Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley and also previously safeguarding minister in the Keir Starmer government. She has dedicated her life, not just politically but professionally before that, to the fight against the scourge of violence against women and girls. So she stepped in to the News Agents studio to ask, in this week of all weeks, can we comfort ourselves that anything... about British society, about the centres of British power have really shifted. Welcome to The News Agents. The News Agents. Well Jess, Jess Phillips, thanks so much for joining us. I know in a way you get called upon Because of your expertise and that you were the safeguarding minister to talk about this stuff. And I know that you find it, in many senses, deeply depressing that that's the case. Yeah. But it happens so often, right? And here we are again. I mean, now we're at the end of the week and these stories clearly have got much further to go. And who knows, there may be other stories to come as well. What are your reflections? I feel really tired. And look, I'm doing all the things that I do. Whenever... I hate to refer to this as opportunity because, you know, it's so awful. The stories are so awful. I learned long ago never to waste a crisis. So I've spent this week like linking up different campaigns with secretaries of state and making sure that. Balls are rolling and people are worried and people are looking into their systems and things. Yeah. So I have been doing that as much as I normally would. But actually, fundamentally, this one, this iteration of, you know, the Me Too, the Sarah Everard, the moments, the big moments where women all vent and say, this is what has been happening to us. I find it incredibly tiring, actually. I found it... Yeah, just a little bit, like, here again. I was literally about to say, there's something quite repetitive about it, isn't there? Yeah, yeah. Like, monotonous about it. And that's sort of a weird thing to sort of say, or weird sort of adjectives to use, because these things are obviously of such gravity, and of such seriousness. Yeah, of course. But they recur, and I just feel like, you know, even in my time in journalism... And these conversations recur and the stories come and it's a bit like, you know, it's a bit like when there's a crisis, right? And what's the thing a minister's rolled out and say, well, lessons will be learned. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Lessons will be learned, should be scrapped from like, you shouldn't be allowed to say it. No, no, no. Enough is enough is the other one. Enough is enough. And it's like, so look, and then I have to sit back and properly try and reflect about. What has changed? Now, the cases from this week, so Russell Brand and David Walliams, in both these cases, you are talking about relatively historic issues. And so I have to say, could this happen now? Now, of course, the answer is yes, this could happen now. But has it improved? Have things improved from... Then from the historic, so 2009 is the first instance in what Russell Brand was charged with. Have things changed? And the answer is yes, but they are slow and they are iterative and it requires the bloodletting every couple of years. And the work of women literally have to go onto the streets and bleed like so many times if you try and get one of these stories across the line, as you will know, and often I have turned to journalism where all of the systems have failed. You know, it is genuinely the good backstop for these stories. Stories But like so often they'll say we can only get the story across the line. If she, like, you know, will, will, like, you know, if she will speak publicly, even anonymously, but if she will go and, if she, and it's so hard to get people into that position. What do you think, you said, you know, compared to Brand in 2009. you. You said that things have changed, albeit it's iterative. What do you think has changed? What is different? I think in the mainstream, and I stress in the mainstream, the kind of patter, we're now all seeing these clips on social media, aren't we, of years gone by and terrible incidences of both Brand and Williams having jokes, lol made about them being... Either gropey or underage or girls or whatever it is. And I genuinely think in the mainstream. That wouldn't be tolerated anymore. You wouldn't get that on panel shows now. You wouldn't get that on panel shows now. You wouldn't get it at awards ceremonies, people saying, oh, basically, you're a paedophile. Lol. Like, you wouldn't get that now. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist in our media, because actually, and look, there is an argument to be had about this, the fact that it is no longer in the mainstream, which seems like a very good thing, is that... It still exists in media, online. I mean, look, Brand, you could just literally track his journey for where he had to go to find the media that would front him up. I mean, Brand in so many ways, right, is a kind of like microcosm of the journey of the media over the last 20 years, right? He starts off in this kind of like laddish mainstream thing, becomes kind of a bit... Saturday night, really mainstream, then becomes a sort of left wingish political figure and then becomes a figure of the sort of manosphere, Christian right, to the point that we saw this week, Megyn Kelly and Elon Musk and other American, you know, Megyn Kelly literally. It starts broadcasting to 4 million followers as soon as the trial's over and goes, the guy's innocent, it's a political witch hunt. Exactly that. So he really is, he's like, you know, he's got main character energy and he really is a sort of main character in this story of where the media has gone. So in the mainstream in the UK, and look what I do think has changed, if I were to go from 2009 to today. And in 2009, I was working in a women's refuge. And then to today is that the public have changed. The public definitely have changed. Culture eats policy for breakfast, as we always say, which usually we say is an excuse for why we like our policies aren't working because the culture is going to change slowly. In this instance, culture has changed faster. And so you definitely there is a sense. in the public that violence against women and girls, violence against children is a far far bigger political issue to them and I say that like political issue to them. than it was 20 years ago and they are alive to it they are much much more alive to it and so that that's that's a reason to be cheerful you know that that that is a good thing feels I mean you know that clip that you're referring to now Jonathan Ross you know who says it's not his joke but you know he he read it out in 2004 feels like if that happened now that would then be on on social media immediately with people saying basically what the **** yeah yeah yeah what on earth what you did this isn't okay the public would be like oh that's close to the back you know at least they'd say yeah yeah no absolutely that that is right the culture has definitely shifted um and some of that means it's been pushed like that sort of culture then has been pushed into a, like, you know, into a place that is less well regulated, which is not necessarily a good thing. But look, so I can say all of that about the culture. But at the exact same time, if I look at the data on violence against women and girls, there are, where it seems to me like the culture is getting better, there is harrowing, sort of growing data around how the age is falling. So the age of perpetration is falling. There's a link. There's a link. As in the perpetrator or the perpetrated? Well, both, but the perpetrator, the age of the perpetrator is falling across almost every single category of violence against women and girls. So this is, you and I, you know, like when we were growing up, you just thought your generation would be better than your dad's. You're like my dad's generation. It's a weirdo down the street. Yeah, it's like old men who batter their wives after going to the pub. We see it sort of levelling, and then this real issue with young... So the most harrowing statistic that I ever had to deal with when I was a minister was that where we know the age of the perpetrator, and let's face it, data in our country is poor, that 53% of child sexual abuse that was reported the year before last, the age of the perpetrator was between the age of 10 and 17. ...of child sexual abuse, 53%. I was at an event yesterday about how we stop child sexual abuse online, and a woman who does huge data gathering across Europe and is doing a piece of work for the Home Office, she said that they have launched a thing about how, like, that sort of... A place for young people to go if they're anxious or worried about they're looking at like child sexual abuse online and in seven days over 30,000 people under the age of 20 had been in touch with that helpline. So... There is a real concern at the same time that I say, I sit here and I can rest on my laurels and feel like I did a good job and that women bleeding in the street at every one of these iterations like we're having this week, and this is only the beginning of this one, it will go on for some weeks and months, that we made progress, we made progress, but then there is this dark bit that is happening that the mainstream is not seeing. Yeah, I mean, and that's that. I mean, that's just a fascinating paradox that you're describing, right? Because on the one hand, it's like the man, sort of polite society, manners, the culture, like, is becoming more alive to this stuff and less tolerant. And yet, in process, maybe connected with that, almost certainly connected with that in some ways, at the unseen fringes, it's possibly getting worse. So do you think, so to put it in a slightly different way, I know you don't have any daughters, but I know you've got young sons. They're not that young anymore. Well, no, not quite the youngest. They're the adults now, frankly. Yeah, well, compared to me. Listen to me. Are they, like, if you did have a daughter of their age, do you think she would be growing up in a better environment with regards to these issues than you? Better in some ways, much worse in others. The proliferation of pornography, if I had a 16-year-old daughter, And I have an 18 year old son. So if I had a 16 year old daughter, I would do with her what I have had to do with my sons, which is. Be really, really upfront about what is real and what isn't real about what they might see. Because as a parent, trying to stop them from seeing things is basically a sort of pointless exercise. I was, um... Do you think the Online Safety Act has made any difference, really? Look, in some regards, the one good thing about the Online Safety Act is it has reduced the access, I mean, to a degree, of young people. pornography. So it has, we won't see the fruition of that in the data yet, because we're dealing with the people, the, you know, the decade before of young people, we allowed tech companies to experiment on our children. And that is how I see it. I see it as a failed, terrible failure of policy to allow basically completely unregulated people to experiment on our children. And so In some regards, I think she'd be safer. I think that systems and processes, were she to come forward, still need a long way to go, but they are better if something had happened to her. But I don't think that anything has been done to prevent. something to happening to a 16 year old girl and that she would be being exposed to attitudes and experiences of young men that definitely were not the same they weren't great when I was a 16 year old but there it's like on sort of steroids like the the biggest the biggest cause of stroke in women under forty is non-fatal strangulation. Is that right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think a study was done in the US on colleges of women under 30 about the instances of how many of them had been strangled during sex. I can't remember the exact data, but it was like, you know, 40, 50% said that they had been strangled during sex. If you were to ask my generation of women, we'd just be like... No, what are you on about? Yeah, like that one. What, next, getting stabbed? Yeah, like, no, nobody has struggled with your accent. And particularly for all the listeners and viewers, I mean, again, who might... I'd be quite shocked by that. I mean, this is a purely pornographic... Oh, yes, 100%. You know, a purely pornographic sort of genesis to this. There probably is various different studies, but there is no direct, like, evidence correlation that I can say. Quite hard to get research funding for that one. I was going to say, I'm not an idiot. Well, funnily enough, the Home Office funds almost exclusively an institution that is specifically to do research on strangulation because of... Because it has become such a dangerous thing. Um, and And so, look, you know, I'd be having to say to my... daughter if I had one like I have said to my sons like I've talked to them about strangulation I've said it is not normal in sexual practice for people to be strangled I have to have to be really really really upfront with them. Just on the point of that parenting thing because obviously we talk particularly when we talk about this stuff politically naturally we talk loads about policy we talk about quite big kind of cultural technological political forces but I do wonder and it's something actually the right more comfortable with talking about sometimes than the left right which is about parenting which is what you've been talking about and the reason I thought about that is I don't know if you saw the clip of Russell Brand's father oh gosh yeah yeah talking outside court um Where, you know, he was asked about it, and he was asked about if he had anything to say to the victims. And he said, victims? Who do you mean? Russell? Do you have a message to the victims? The victims? What victims? Not Russell, his victims. The girl, do you mean, who chased him there last year? He was convicted. I don't care. It's a system. We don't believe the justice system. I don't believe it on the basis of what I've just watched. Thank you very much. My pleasure. And then various clips have emerged over the course of the week of he and a young Russell Brand talking in deeply graphic, lurid, revolting terms about prostituted women when Brand was in his early 20s. And like, obviously, this is not exculpatory or excusing anywhere of Russell Brand, but you've got to think. Look, it's quite clear where some of these attitudes have come from, right? And there is there is all sorts of studies that show you that like where a child has a trusted adult, they are much less likely to become a victim and or a perpetrator. So like that, undoubtedly, parenting plays an enormous role in this. Yes, but I think now, much less so, and actually I think it's why we're having so much of a conversation about... Banning social media and, like, it's because the parents of today, your 30, your people who are about having their children at the moment, your 30-year-olds, are also digital natives. Yeah. And so they're actually kicking off. Yeah, because they understand. They understand. They were part of the... I feel dreadful for my children in some regards, although we definitely tried to do as much as we could to level the playing field for my children. But they are the generation that were digital natives not being raised by digital natives. Thank And so, look, parenting plays an enormous role in this, but I think that for a lot of people, like Sky News did this... A big documentary on a thing called The Comm, you which is the worst thing I've ever come across. And that is after. very High bar because I've I've worked with people who've been enslaved for years and this is like much. children abusing other children online grooming other children online to do sadistic like not just sexual acts like cutting themselves up and eating their flesh and things and like the the concept that your kid might be upstairs doing that to most parents Is so far removed from your experience that you can't even begin to imagine it, let alone know what to do and say. So I can sit and say, oh, I've seen the data on strangulation. I'll sit down with my boys and my boys. I have to say this generation is much more comfortable talking about sex with their parents than us. I used to like leave the room and stuff. But my kids, they watch sex education with me. And like, you know, I'm like that. Why are you not more embarrassed? I remember when we were watching Salt Burn, I was like, this is too much for me. My dad would walk out. But like, like I have done that quite graphically with my children, but I never sat down with them and said, if you see people sadistically, like, you know, like, so. Parents also need to be taken on this job. I think they're at a bit of a deficit as well. But absolutely, parenting plays a role. Absolutely. And we should talk about it much more. So just in terms of some of the policy changes that I've seen being discussed, rather than just the cultural stuff, because you say a lot of this is cultural, but obviously politics and policy does play a big part. What do you think of the idea of... Which has been talked about a bit this week, about a staggered age of consent. Because obviously, if we take that, I mean, we've been talking about the Brand and Walliams cases, and of course they are different, and Mr. Walliams denies accusations of predation and so on. But nonetheless, what's certainly true is that he was a much older man, emailing and contacting very young women, girls. Mm-hmm. At the very least with the suggestion, we've seen emails from the Guardian of sexual contacts. Of course, if we had had a staggered age of consent, so different European countries do this, you basically say, well, you can have sex when you're 16, but only with like a 17-year-old or 15, but certainly not with a 30-year-old or a 35-year-old. What do you think of that idea? Look, at first, when people first started being like, well, we should just raise the age of consent, look, what I have seen the age of consent become, Um, over many, many years of working in this field is just a cliff edge, uh, for as if like when you, even if like you made it 18, um, like, like it would the same 18 year old the day before or the day after is as vulnerable. Uh, and, and I sort of find it absolutely maddening. I mean, Louise Casey addressed it in, cause we have had sort of a staggered age of consent, really. Uh, Louise Casey addressed it in the work that she did on the grooming gangs in that. 13 to 16, people were not automatically charged with rape because they might have believed that they were over the age of consent. Now, we have changed that law now, so it is an absolute at 16. So already there was a bit of a stagger under 13, over 13. Thank But I have to say, the David Walliams case leaves me, which he denies, of course, but look, He's not alone. There'll be lots of these cases like this. It leaves a number of open policy questions that you struggle to find you. an answer to. Because grooming in and of itself isn't a crime. The age of consent definitely seems to have... In the reporting, he's like, I'll call you back after you're 16, sort of thing. Or asking the age, and they're like, are you legal? Like, legal is the barrier, is definitely those two things. So look, I'm absolutely open. As a person who has sat through hundreds of court cases, what I am always really mindful of is that the idea that you put a law on the books and then the job is done. Because... I would quite like just a grooming crime. That seems like the answer to the kind of cases that we're seeing in the Walliams case. Because at the moment, the law is that grooming can be part of another crime, rather than a sort of crime in and of itself. Yeah, yeah. So you'll get aggravating factors for grooming behaviours on a sexual crime, but you have to have committed the sexual crime. So you can groom someone, not have sex with them. And then get away with it. Or have sex with them consensually and completely legally at the age of 16. And that doesn't seem like, you know, nobody in the country would think, well, that's terrible. So if you groom them up to 16, but only had sex with them when they were 16, which some people have accused essentially Walliams of doing, that's potentially fine. Well, you know, you're dancing on the head of the pin if you're going for, it's technically legal, but it is technically legal. I mean, if it's technically legal and you did nothing wrong, maybe don't. Don't try and hide it for so many years. Yes, but... But so what do we do? Now, I am more, what I don't, I think the staggered age of consent seems right. It seems completely like the sensible option. And I'm meeting with the campaigners tomorrow, funnily enough, who are really, really pushing on this. And so, but it's just. How easy will it be to get a crime over the line? So if I were to put grooming on the books, which seems like the right thing to do, I still think that unless you had multiple cases, so the Walliams case, you'd probably get across the line because it's he said, she said, she said, she said, she said. Whereas that doesn't mean that the girl who's only one girl who's been groomed, It would be much harder to show that as a pattern of behaviour to get the evidential barrier to get to court. So what I don't want to do is put a crime on the books that then is... Like our modern slavery laws, so few people, they're seen as world leading and we were absolutely... It was Theresa May, she was the vanguard of the world. And if you look at the... Conviction rates, you'd just be horrified. It's like four or five a year, and it's just like, oh, my gosh. You think a law is an achievement in itself. A law is not an achievement in itself. But I'm totally open to the idea of if you're over 20. Like, you know, like... You've got no business sleeping with a 16-year-old. As my husband kept saying to me, above all else. What do they chat about? I don't know what I'd chat with a 16-year-old girl about. I was like that. I'm not sure chatting was the goal here, Tom, bless you. It's like, but like. I think that that does seem about right. But then you will have grey areas. Of course, and the law's got to do with that as well. Like, you know, my mum married my dad and she was, I think she was 17 and my dad was 21. Like, you know, like... Yeah, my mum had me when she was 17 and my dad was 21. Exactly. So, like, you know, you do... So maybe I should have been careful about this law. Maybe my dad's listening to this now. Luckily, tell your dad the law is not retrospective. I think that's fine. So, and that's another thing is whatever law we change, it won't capture... The Walliams case, because the law is not retrospective. Indeed so. Well, leaving aside the law, something that struck me, and I was actually talking about this with Emily the other day, and she said it reminded her of what happened with Weinstein, which is, and I'm not necessarily saying that these two men are the same as Weinstein or whatever, but obviously some of the... Well, I mean, Russell Brand is a convicted rapist, so we can certainly say that. Yeah. What is true is that it sort of surprised me, I don't know if it surprised you, the extent to which, I mean, almost no, none of the contemporaries have spoken out about it. I mean, none of the male contemporaries have spoken about that time or given any reflections, the people who knew them, who might have even sort of said, well, actually, you know, the people who've spoken out about it are women. And that's what Emily was saying is exactly with Weinstein. It was the women who spoke out about it and it was hear no evil see no evil. I saw nothing Even though it would be perfectly kind of not only legitimate but actually quite admirable if some of the people around at the time said look I had I didn't do anything wrong nothing to do with it But was I too? Did I see things that in retrospect really I wouldn't tolerate now or I should have thought more about yes, but there's been none of that Yeah, look, again, I go back to where I started and saying I'm tired and women have to do a lot of bloodletting. These things feel like work to us. I remember in the Black Lives Matter movement, I think it was Donald Glover was coming out and saying, like, this is really tiring. Like, you know, like having to explain myself constantly and like, yeah, that you're right. I think they're probably terrified. They're probably terrified to open them. Like, first and foremost, try not to put yourself in the middle of a women's related drama. I concede that argument, that and that. Like, but let me tell you, doors open, lads. Come on through. Like, that's fine. You can talk about this and it would be really nice to hear it. But, But. Um... I think that they're probably feel quite sort of terrified about being like, you know, in any way implicated with it. And look, this is something we really have to, and I feel like I've been saying this for about 10 years until I'm blue in the face, is that we do have to be really, really careful about just shunning this out of the mainstream into a dark place. Everybody in the country and everybody listening to this knows, loves, works alongside somebody who has harmed women. Statistically speaking, it would be impossible for that not to be the case. These people are people we are all around all the time and actually I think people are so frightened to say that they know they know somebody who's done this and they still like them and they wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt or they weren't sure like we we do we we the crowd We need to open ourselves up to that conversation because, do you know what, that's what victims experience. So what victims will have thrown at them in court is, well, why did you text him afterwards? Like, if he raped you, why did you keep in touch with him afterwards? Or indeed the description of... Rape during the trial, the Bra trial, as a, what was it, sort of momentary lack of respect for... Momentary lack of respect. I often think of anal rape as a momentary lack of respect. Sometimes, and, you know, we're all guilty of it, I commit momentary acts of a lack of respect. So far, I've avoided anally raping anybody. I was talking about this with someone last night. I mean, I know, obviously, lawyers have to represent... Yeah. They have to represent their clients. Yeah. But I do wonder, like, I mean, maybe it's just something about our system. There's sort of the, you know, the adversarial nature of our system and other countries do it slightly differently. But I wonder if he went home that night and what he thought about saying that in front of... I mean, I don't want to put words in the mouth of a man who is almost certainly quite litigious by his very nature. I had a conversation with my mate about it at the weekend and she was just like oh you know is it just that they're like paid to say that sort of thing like that is their job, it's their job and I said yeah that that is the case in some cases but you might believe it. Like, you know, it sounds to me like he thinks, oh, you know, storm in a teacup, these things happen. And look, actually, do I think that Ian Winter, the KC, should be totally cancelled for that? I think we should have a conversation. I'd actually quite like to sit down and talk to him about it. Like, I think... You're listening in. Ian, let's have a chat. Yeah. Um... But, like, I think that... I mean, he's got not a great track record of defending people. Didn't he defend Shipman? Well, I mean, I suppose everybody deserves a defense, but I do think that we have to be like, we have to make space for people to come out and say, I always thought it was a bit weird, but you know, like I had to go to work and like, you know, and all of that, but we do need to make that space. But the men, the men should absolutely come out and be like, oh, you know, we're. I mean, look, people I know have said, well, obviously everyone had heard whispers, but what are you meant to do with whispers? So actually, we need to create a system of what you're meant to do with whispers. What are you meant to do? Because actually, enough whispers would lead an organisation, let's say the one who made Britain's Got Talent in this instance, or Big Brother's Little Brother or whatever brand did. Yeah. If you hear enough whispers, then it's on you as an organisation, then, isn't it, to investigate and to look into that. And there is obviously the question of kind of, as you say, the institutional barriers that we put in place to resolve this. And it's something I'm very interested in. I know you're interested in. You've written a piece in The Independent saying, no one will believe you. I promise it won't happen again. But if people find out, I don't know how I'll react. I could lose everything. Assertions that every woman who has suffered abuse at the hands of a man will have heard. Government campaigns set up helplines and urge people to speak. Our institutions urge victims to speak up. Speak up. Speak up. We know that it's powerful to do so. We urge the weak, the harmed and unrepresented to break through all the guilt they'll feel if they, quote, ruin people's lives. We ask victims to put aside the children and wives of their abusers as easily as those abusers discarded that responsibility. And we ask them to speak up. So why then are our laws and legal institutions able to be used? To send the exact opposite message, which to me just feels like exactly the, how could anyone come to a different conclusion after this week? You know, the media, I mean, it happens to be, as you say, they had journalists on site who were willing to spend a hell of a lot of money through the court process, which presumably they'll get some of it back now, although probably not all of it. You know, they spent three years to try and dismantle a legal process or a legal institution, i.e. an injunction, which was being used to protect the privacy versus the right, the right of privacy versus the right of these women to tell their stories without legal opposition. I mean, look, you see, I mean, this is what I'm going to call, and I think I saw Kwasi Kwarteng this week saying he hates the word patriarchy. This is what I'm going to call an overarching sense of the patriarchy. Now, the laws that David Walliams relied on, And then non-disclosure agreements, laws were written to protect the vulnerable. They were literally written. Um, And it's funny that like if I think of a woman who I met recently, whose son was murdered abroad and it got caught up in a whole true crime thing. And now she's got no privacy and there's this whole like nonsense. It's for her, you know, it's for people like her that she should be. Of course, she's a working class woman from up north. She ain't got no lawyers taking out injunctions for her. It That is what that privacy law is for. And our non-disclosure agreements is so that workers can get proper settlements and move on without their name being discredited. And somehow the sort of power and money and wealth that exists in the system has perverted the use of really good and legitimate laws to its, it's bent them to its will. So it's not just a patriarchal thing, it's a class thing. Oh, it's, it's, it's classic wealth and patriarchal. Absolutely. Those three things, which let's face it, you know, I work in parliament. That's all. That's, that's the big three. I How on earth have our laws been allowed? agree. And look, we've rewritten the non-disclosure agreement laws. You can't use them in cases of sexual harassment anymore. Although I just know at the moment in some lawyer's office with some grubby CEO or whatever is sitting in front of them trying to work out a different way around that. Well, I saw a tweet. I saw a tweet, I think from one of the journalists involved in one of the cases this week, and it was just an email from a very, very well-known law firm, one of the biggest in London, that was sent to an 18-year-old girl who was involved in one of the accusations, basically saying, if you break this agreement, you'll face 10 years in prison, and our client will move against you. And you're thinking there, how the hell? Like, some 18-year-old girl. How are we going to respond to that? You must have had these letters. Yeah, completely. And I'm a woman of power. I also have legal insurance through my job. It is terrifying. I remember the first time I got one. I literally was like totally freaked out. Now I'm much more alive. I had one from exactly the same firm. Yeah, like, you know, it is absolutely terrifying. And also that culture is trickling down. It is properly trickling down. So if a woman goes on Facebook and says, I'm a victim of domestic abuse, she doesn't need to say the name of the person. But by association to her, she started to get like legal letters saying, you can't talk about your own experience. We have. I've got to very, very quickly look at how our laws are being used. But frankly, the ethics of a lawyer who would do that. I just think, what were you ends? Don't be the change you want to see. It relies on those people propping up that system. And I get that you have to represent your client, but you know... Is that what you went to law school for? You went to law school to send an 18-year-old to shut your mouth. Also, she won't go to prison for 10 years. Absolutely not. You're just lying to her. I now do this thing where I'm like, when I'm starting to act in the grey, I'm like, am I willing to represent this in court? Yes, I am. I will make sure that woman is represented by the greatest lawyers on earth. And the legal institutions matter, right? Because as you point out in your piece, you know, it was only made illegal to rape your wife in this country in 1991, which means that any husband who raped his wife before 1991. It's innocent in the eyes of the law, right? Technically innocent. Technically speaking. If you held your wife down and raped her before then, technically you've done nothing wrong. And that is why the legal institutions matter. So before we wrap up, I mean, you were the safeguarding minister. Obviously, you had the strategy to deal with violence against women and girls. You've obviously thought about this stuff your whole career. You tried to affect change, and I'm sure you did. Thank But what else needs to change now? If you could, I mean I know, because working in Whitehall, trying to affect this stuff is so hard. But if you think that there were legal changes that now could be made. you Oh look, there's always iterative legal changes, but there actually isn't necessarily legal changes that I think need to change. very It's the reason I feel tired, is that it just needs a shed load more will. It needs political will behind it. much. It needs to be... I had a mug in the Home Office that said, I want what counter-terrorism's got. Um, And it isn't always just we. It needs money. It needs, like, every inch of government. it, uh and institutions to be where the public it is. Also Starmer made it a mission, didn't he? Oh, he absolutely did make it a mission and I very much expect you. in Andy's 10 year plan it will be in there as well like you know deeds not words is what I'm after um which I think I literally directly said to Kirsty Armah in my resignation letter it like you know it being a mission it it It has to be so core and so much more push. Me and my mate Anna, we often talk about how after politics we're going to do a PhD and our PhD is going to be on why on earth businesses, governments, monarchies didn't see in their SWOT analysis of what was going to cause them to topple and cause them a load of grief. I bet you not one of them has violence against women and girls and yet it brought down the head of the Metropolitan Police. People forget this, it brought down Boris Johnson's government. It was actually the pincher thing that brought down Boris Johnson's government. I think it was actually I should actually. violence against men. Against men, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sexual harassment. Men's violence, yeah, men's violence. As Boris Johnson famously said, Pincher by name, Pincher by nature. Pincher by Nature by nature, yeah. You know, the monarchy is having a dicey time with it, aren't they? Not just here, all around the world. Like, what on earth? It will be one of the main things that is written in history about the Trump presidency. I can't say. Like, why is it still not considered to be the national risk, the risk that it is? I could have gone into NVIDIA, right, beforehand, into that company and said, I feel like this guy is probably primed to fall for this. Like, men's behaviour in your workforce. I mean, how much money's come off the NVIDIA stock share this week? Why on earth? So that's what needs to change, is for people to feel it so acutely as a risk to their very institution. The public has said it's a risk. We're going to kick off every time this happens. We're going to kick off. Why on earth? Do institutions not take that risk on board much more seriously? Obviously, that... That's what really needs to change. And maybe we won't just have constant reiterations. Well, Jess Phillips, we look forward to the PhD. When it will be Dr. Phillips. Thanks, Jess. Thanks so much. No worries. Well, as ever, you can hear the passion, the zeal, but also the sadness and torment in Jessie's voice for someone who has dedicated so much of her energies, her life, her passions to the eradication of what she sees as a plague, what is a plague in our society. It is depressing, as we said at the very start, to find ourselves having those conversations again and again and again. That is it from all of us for this week on The News Agents. We will, of course, be back on Monday as usual. And for those listeners, you lucky listeners and subscribers to News Agents Plus, there will, of course, be a special Q&A episode between John and me, which will be dropping over the course of the weekend. And, of course, you lucky things, you can have even more of me by listening to Sundays with Lewis Goodall on LBC for the best political interviews and analysis. That is from 10 every Sunday until midday. From all of us, though, have a lovely weekend. The News Agents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. This has been a Global Production.