SAFEGUARDING Minister Jess Phillips has warned Andrew Tate that there are warrants out for his arrest as she unveiled new plans to tackle violence against women and girls.
She told GB News’ Political Editor Christopher Hope: “What the government is announcing today is a prevention program for young men and boys who show signs of sexually harmful behaviours.
“So if I go around schools and what teachers and parents and children themselves tell me is things like the proliferation of violent online pornography has led to some dangerous attitudes, and so what we are announcing today will provide evidence based programs that goes into schools and reacts to the school’s needs if young men are showing those sorts of behaviours or are in abusive relationships themselves.”
Asked what she would say to the social media influencer Andrew Tate, she said: “What I would say to Andrew Tate is that there [are] a number of warrants out for your arrest for crimes of violence and abuse.
“But Andrew Tate is just one in a long line of angry men who, I have to say I don’t think, as the mother of sons, I don’t think he’s got my son’s best interests at heart.
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“We need to make sure that the government is providing context for young boys in schools, so that when they hear horrible, violent, misogynistic things that that we can make sure that that doesn’t lead young men to a life of criminality.”
On what message she has for parents, she said: “I would say is that be in your children’s life, and make sure that you know what they are looking at and, again, provide that context.
“But the government is going to, as part of the strategy, be launching both the helpline for children who are worried about their own behaviours, but also a series of resources for parents to talk to their children about the kind of things they might be seeing online.
“Because we recognise that you need to do this in schools. You need to do this in homes, and children need some support themselves.”
Asked if working class white boys were being unfairly targeted, she said: “Oh, absolutely not. This is something that will be rolled out across the country. And look, the patriarchal norms and misogyny is not something that is confined to any one group in society.
“So this is across the country…what we have committed to is rolling this out in every school by the end of the parliament.”
Phillips was asked if foreign sex offenders should be deported: “When people come to our country, they have to live by our rules, and we have, and I will lay out some even more robust rules today around what is expected of the men in our country, whether they were born here or not, and if you do not live by those rules, you are not welcome in our country.
“If people are committing sex offences or offences of violence against women and girls, absolutely. The government has increased the deportation of foreign national offenders by 12% and let me tell you that in the Home Office, I sit laser focused on the crimes that I focus on to make sure that our laws alongside the Home Secretary are the most robust they could ever be, with regard to sex offenders, for example.
“For the first time, this government passed [laws] that no sex offender would be entitled to seek asylum in our country, and that is something that is about protecting everybody.”
On the terms of reference of the grooming gangs inquiry saying that it would not be an exhaustive investigation, she said: “Oh, look, it will absolutely be an exhaustive investigation, and not only will the inquiry work around the country to get to the truth of what happened in the past and uncover the issues of why these cases got ignored, looking at issues of both ethnicity but also just real failures within institutions.
“But alongside that is a policing operation that is operating for the entire country that has already seen a massive increase in arrests for crimes such as rape, that is operational entirely across the country.
“What I would say is that some grooming gang victims, absolutely not all, and there is no one sort of victim, but if people want to question me as a government minister in my actions now, I’ve spent my life telling victims that they should use their voices, take every platform that they have, to fight for the thing that they believe in, and I absolutely have to listen to what they say and listen to all the victims that I deal with.
“But of course, my response to anyone who has laid criticism to me is that I take that criticism absolutely on board and made sure that, in response to some criticisms that they had made, for example, that we made the grooming gang inquiry absolutely laser focused exactly where it needs to be to look at, frankly, the historic failings of the past.”
