Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

PMQs: Jess Phillips heckles Sunak over modern slavery protections

Jess Phillips (Photo: Parliament)

Prime Minister’s Questions was unusually feisty for a pre-Budget session. It covered the two big political rows of the week on the Illegal Migration Bill and Gary Lineker, both of which elicited a tribal response from both Conservative and Labour benches.

The session started with a particularly angry question from Labour’s Jess Phillips about a tweet from Rishi Sunak which threatened those who had come to the UK illegally with not being able to use modern slavery protections – even if they are trafficked women being raped repeatedly. Phillips drew from her own experience working in the domestic abuse sector, and told Sunak that his tweet would be shown to victims by people traffickers as evidence that no one would come to help them.

As Sunak replied, the Labour MP shouted with frustration, heckling him as he sat down with something that sounded like she was accusing him of being happy for the victims to carry on being raped.

Isabel Hardman
Written by
Isabel Hardman
Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. She also presents Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.

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