Jess Phillips suggested Elon Musk ‘crack on with this getting to Mars’ after enduring days of abuse – as she described harrowing grooming cases she has dealt with
Jess Phillips comments on Elon Musk’s criticism
Jess Phillips hit back at Elon Musk with a brutal seven-word reply to his string of shameful attacks.
The tech billionaire has targeted the Safeguarding Minister with a string of vile messages that have led to her receiving serious threats. But a defiant Ms Phillips vowed not to be silenced by Musk.
In recent days the 53-year-old Twitter /X owner brand her a “witch” and a “rape genocide apologist” despite her long and impressive record tackling sexual violence. He began targeting her after the Government refused to reopen a national inquiry into grooming gangs, saying it would focus on action.
Asked if she had a message for him, Ms Phillips told Sky News: “Just, you know…. crack on with this ‘getting to Mars’. You know, Elon Musk is going to Elon Musk.I’ve got bigger and more important things to be thinking about.”
Describing some of the harrowing cases she has dealt with, the Labour minister said it is “painful to watch” the issue being used as a “political football”. She said: “My strongest feeling is that there is a huge furore about something a man, thousands of miles away, said about me that has led to an issue that I care so deeply about and have dedicated most of my working life and quite a lot of my personal life to making better and supporting victims, specifically of grooming gangs really directly.
“And it’s painful to watch it become a political football rather than an actual attempt to really do something.”
Ms Phillips went on: “You get very, very tired when you do this kind of work and I’ve sat in courtrooms with young girls because they’ll only speak if I’m sat there holding their hand. I’ve watched – I’ve literally had a young woman, groomed and raped and she was pregnant, miscarry to the point where it marked my shoes because I was in the room with her and taking her to hospital while that was happening.
“And none of their voices, no care was given about these women. And these sudden demands being made, whether it’s by the Conservative Party or ridiculous statements that are false being made about me and my government by a man, a thousand miles away is just really, really, really painful when you know what I know, when you’ve seen what I’ve seen.
“And those young women deserve considerably better.”
She said the erratic tech billionaire “knows absolutely nothing” about grooming gangs – accusing Mr Musk of trying to “silence women like me”.
Ms Phillips told ITV News last night the intervention had “turned her world upside down.”
“The thing that annoys me most about it is it takes up so much bandwidth of my time from a man who knows absolutely nothing about the subject he’s talking about.”
Ms Phillips told ITV her initial instinct was to approve Oldham Council’s request to hold a Home Office Inquiry into abuse that happened in the town.
But she said she wanted to secure a similar process for Oldham as had been seen previously in Telford’s locally led inquiry, which was “the only one that has ever done anything to actually change the council, the local police, the local CPS.”
“A Home Office led inquiry, that is not what I have seen work,” she said. “I have seen the alternative work, and so I will base my decisions on evidence, not on a very rich man in America.”
Asked if she worried about her safety, she said: “Of course I worry about my safety. Of course, and you have to, anyone who has worked in the fields of violence against women and girls.
“Risk is dynamic and I have to take account of the risks in my life and this is one of them currently.”
