Misogyny to be treated as ‘any other extremist ideology’, says Jess Phillips

Home Office minister Jess Phillips has said misogyny will be treated as “any other extremist ideology”, as the Government pledges to fill in “gaps” in countering radicalisation.

As part of their strategy for tackling violence against women and girls, Labour have previously announced plans to create a new perpetrator programme to target the 1,000 most dangerous abusers and sex offenders.

Under the proposed plans, the police would be required to “relentlessly pursue” perpetrators who posed a risk to women, using counter-terror-style data analysis and tactics to get repeat serious offenders off the streets, with the aim of increasing women’s safety.

On concerns that treating misogyny as extremism could criminalise free speech, Ms Phillips told LBC: “You just use the exact same test you would with far-right extremism and Islamism, wouldn’t you.

“The same test would have to apply.

“People can hold views about women all they like, but it’s not OK any more to ignore the massive growing threat caused by online hatred towards women and for us to ignore it because we’re worried about the line, rather than making sure the line is in the right place as we would do with any other extremist ideology.”

On Saturday, the Home Office announced a crackdown on people “pushing harmful and hateful beliefs” to “kick-start” a new approach to fighting extremism.

The strategy will look at the rise of both Islamist and far-right extremism in the UK, as well as wider ideological trends, including extreme misogyny.

Ms Phillips said the new plans were about “looking at exactly what those definitions are” and filling in “gaps”.

She said: “The National Police Chiefs’ Council (have) concerns about the growing rise in misogynistic attitudes among young men, largely because of online content they’re seeing.

“This isn’t about criminalising people who are showing signs of an ideology, it is about preventing that ideology, and this piece of work the Home Secretary has announced today is about looking at the gaps.”

She added: “Bear in mind we haven’t had a countering-extremism strategy written in this country since 2015, and the world changes, and the likes of this sort of online misogynistic trends that we have seen in the last nine years are completely and utterly ignored by that.

“This is about having the tools as a Government, across government departments, whether that’s what we do with tech companies, how we advise and guide teachers in what to do, about this growing trend of not just misogyny but Islamism and far-right ideologies.”

In the wake of the violent disorder seen in recent weeks, there have been calls on the Government to toughen the Online Safety Bill which is due to come into force later this year, to crack down on incitement on social media.

On whether the Online Safety Bill would have to be strengthened, Ms Phillips said: “We are going to have to have a look across the board in this evidential sprint with both academic experts and all of the agencies that deal with this, education and police, look at where the gaps are and seek to fill them.

“I’m not going to pre-empt what it’s going to say.”

The MP for Birmingham Yardley, who has been open about the misogynistic hate she herself has received online, said social media companies “are undoubtedly going to have to be part of the solution”.

She said: “With the previous government’s Online Safety Bill, that still hasn’t come into fruition yet but we’re going to have to make sure that is as robust as possible because if my teenage sons watch something on the television, there is a far, far greater place for me to have that regulated and to know that can be trusted than when they’re in their bedrooms and I have no idea what they’re looking at and the level of regulation is considerably lower at the moment.”

The new Government’s approach would require police forces to use data and intelligence on named suspects of rape, stalking and domestic abuse to devise a matrix of people who posed the most threat in their area – identifying, monitoring and targeting the most prolific perpetrators of violence against women and girls to prevent reoffending.

Forces would be asked to systematically rank high-risk suspects according to the frequency, recency and severity of the allegations made against them.

Once identified, Labour had said perpetrators should be targeted using the tactics and tools normally reserved for counter-terror and organised crime such as covert and surveillance operations and most-wanted manhunts.

A Labour Party spokesperson said: “(Sir) Keir Starmer set out a historic mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.

“That requires a complete transformation in how every government department and agency approaches these devastating crimes, from a new focused response from policing through to a proper prevention strategy, including pushing back on the growth of insidious extreme violent misogyny both on and offline.”