Farage and Badenoch have ‘weaponised’ violence against women, claims Labour’s Bridget Phillipson

Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch have “weaponised” violence against women and girls “for political point-scoring” but do not care about the real issue, Labour chair Bridget Phillipson has claimed.

In an interview with The Independent, Ms Phillipson, the cabinet minister for women and equalities, lambasted Britain’s two main right-wing parties for ignoring what she describes as “a national emergency” in women’s safety.

The former education secretary, who has been tasked by the prime minister, Andy Burnham, with leading the party’s campaign machine, spoke to The Independent ahead of opening the Labour Women’s Conference in Liverpool on Saturday, a day before the party’s main conference.

In a wide-ranging discussion, she also spoke about:

She said: “I think we are seeing a weaponisation of violence against women and girls by parts of the right that I don’t believe will challenge the attitudes that we’re seeing, or will lead to women feeling safer – and that is my focus. I want all women to be able to lead the lives that they want to live without fear of intimidation or abuse.”

She added: “The way that the Tories and Reform have approached this issue is all too often about political point-scoring. They’re not serious about taking the action that’s needed to protect women.

“I think the difference between the approach I take and this government takes, and then the Tories and Reform, is that they’re only interested in talking about women’s safety when it relates to immigration or asylum.”

Ms Phillipson’s decision to speak out on the way she sees violence against women and girls being manipulated by the right comes after the Oxfordshire village of Piddington voted in favour of independence because of plans to open a migrant camp there.

Women in the village wrote to Ms Phillipson expressing concerns over their safety over the plan to put more than 1,000 male migrants in the nearby former military base.

Ms Badenoch later visited, but Ms Phillipson remains dismissive of the Tory leader’s interest, as well as Mr Farage’s claims to be concerned for women in the village. He also weighed in on the Piddington debate, and the party’s education spokesperson, former Tory Suella Braverman, visited the village.

Both the Tories and Reform were also critical of Labour when there were protests and disturbances outside a migrant hotel in Epping after an asylum seeker was arrested for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl.

But in a furious attack, Ms Phillipson said: “When was the last time Kemi Badenoch visited a rape crisis centre or women’s refuge? Has Nigel Farage ever shown any interest in visiting a women’s refuge, or is he only interested in talking about violence against women when it allows them to make a political point?

“I mean, that does for me call into question whether they – whether Reform and the Tories – are actually serious about tackling this issue, or whether they just want to make it an issue that is used as a weapon.”

She expressed sympathy for the women in Piddington. “Of course all women across our country have the right to be safe, and that includes women in Piddington as well. And the concerns that they raise should be taken seriously too, because they, like every other woman in our country, should feel safe.”

For Ms Phillipson the issue of violence against women is personal because her mother set up a domestic abuse charity, Wearside Women in Need, when she was growing up.

She went on: “Women’s safety is a national emergency, but that has to mean all women, because you know we live in a country where a woman is killed by her partner or former partner every five days, and the safety of women is of the utmost importance.

“That’s why just this week I’ve launched a task force on tackling misogyny. So the attitudes that mean that women live smaller lives, that they don’t always feel safe on our streets or in their own homes.”

In December, Labour unveiled its strategy to halve violence against women in a decade, with £550m pledged for victims’ services, new rape trial courts, a £13m national centre for VAWG (violence against women and girls), domestic abuse protection orders, covert online teams, a new offence on spiking and funding for teacher training on the issue.

But campaigners criticised the Starmer government over the delay in producing the strategy, along with a lack of funding. There have also been criticisms over protecting single women’s spaces and sport. Former minister for VAWG Jess Phillips resigned over a failure to tackle the problem online.

During Sir Keir’s premiership, Reform and the Tories also made a series of attacks over the grooming gangs issue where in many cases gangs of Asian men were sexually preying on underage white girls.

Labour was criticised for initially resisting holding a national inquiry into the scandal.

Ms Phillipson said it was “right that we now have a national inquiry underway to really tackle the roots of group-based and child exploitation” but suggested that class issues had also come into play in this scandal.

“A lot of what happened in that period was that there was a total failure to listen to women, to believe women, especially working-class girls who were reporting unimaginable abuse but weren’t taken seriously, and that’s the kind of culture that we have to shift in our country.”

As a result, she has said that class inequality is now “a major focus” of her work.

In a political landscape increasingly defined by so-called culture war issues, Ms Phillipson made it clear she is up for the fight, highlighting concerns about the rise in ethno-nationalism which were made by former Tory PM Rishi Sunak.

“I agreed with Rishi Sunak when he said that it’s a deeply worrying trend that we’re seeing that people’s national identity, their British identity, is being called into question because of their skin colour.”

Raising the way the issue has been linked to the migrant crisis leading to the abuse of RNLI volunteers, she blasted: “People who have no other role or commitment other than to stop people losing their lives on the sea. The online abuse they’ve received is just absolutely appalling.”

She is also furious that the new Reform council in her home constituency in Sunderland has cancelled support for Show Racism the Red Card’s work at schools after “30 years of brilliant work”.

The Labour women’s conference is set to be faced with a protest by trans activists, but the party has also been accused of not doing enough to protect women-only spaces.

Ms Phillipson insists she wants to remain “pragmatic” with the trans debate, siding with the Supreme Court ruling on protecting female-only spaces. Women’s and men’s toilets at the Labour conference will be single-sex spaces based on biology.

“I’ve always believed that women should have the right to single-sex spaces on the basis of their biology,” Ms Phillipson said.

“But I also believe that trans people have the right to live their lives free from intimidation, harassment and should continue to enjoy protections under the law.”

Addressing the criticisms made about the Tories, a source close to Ms Badenoch said: “This is a spiteful and absurd attack from a woman in a party that struggles to recognise what a woman is. We won’t apologise for talking about the fear women feel from men being allowed into their changing rooms, or from male illegal immigrants who need to be told not to rape.

“Kemi has spent years standing up for women, protecting single-sex spaces, listening to grooming gang survivors and hearing from women failed because institutions were too weak to confront uncomfortable truths. The women she met in Piddington this week would find Phillipson dismissing their concerns as ‘political point-scoring’ insulting.

“It’s preposterous for Labour to lecture anyone about protecting women when they had to rewrite their own sentencing plans to stop rapists being released early. Phillipson was a useless education secretary who sent school standards backwards.”

The Independent has approached Reform UK for a response.