page_title: Jess Phillips
section_title: 2017 parliament
hierarchical_section_title: Jess Phillips / Parliamentary career / 2017 parliament
caption_attribution_description: English: Official portrait of Jess Philips
context_page_description: Jessica Rose Phillips is a British Labour Party politician. She has served as the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Yardley since the 2015 general election. She has served in Keir Starmer’s Opposition frontbench as Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding since 2020.
  Phillips was appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Lucy Powell, the Shadow Education Secretary, in 2015. A vocal critic of the former Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn, Phillips resigned as a PPS in protest over Corbyn‘s leadership and threatened to resign from the Labour Party and sit as an independent MP if Corbyn was re-elected as Labour Leader. She supported Owen Smith in the failed attempt to replace Corbyn in the 2016 leadership election and did not complete her pledge to resign as a Labour MP. Phillips was a candidate for Labour Leader in the 2020 leadership election but withdrew from the later stages of the contest due to a lack of support.
context_section_description: Phillips criticised the calling of the 2017 snap election. She was reselected as the Labour candidate for Birmingham Yardley, while her predecessor as MP for the seat John Hemming was reselected by the Liberal Democrats, in what was reported as a "grudge match". Phillips subsequently gained 25,398 votes (57.1%), increasing her majority to 16,574 votes (37.2%) over the second-place Conservative candidate, with the Lib Dems finishing in third place. Upon her victory, she continued her criticisms of Hemming.
  Following the 2017 snap general election, Phillips said the Women's PLP would co-ordinate to promote policies beneficial to women in the context of a hung parliament.
  In July 2017, Phillips called for a review into elections for chairs of House of Commons select committees due to the relatively low number of female candidates.
  In March 2018, Phillips again threatened to resign from the Labour Party, this time in response to Labour's handling of sexual harassment allegations against Labour MP Kelvin Hopkins, stating that she would "cut up her membership card" if the alleged victim was questioned by Hopkins as part of the investigation.
  In July 2018 it was reported that Phillips served as deputy editor of The House, the in-house Parliamentary magazine published by the Dods Group, which had been purchased by Conservative Party donor and former vice-chairman Michael Ashcroft, earning an annual salary of £8,000 for two hours' work per month.
  In March 2019, she said: "I think I'd be a good prime minister" and that "I feel like I can't leave the Labour Party without rolling the dice one more time. I owe it that. But it doesn't own me. It’s nothing more than a logo if it doesn't stand for something that I actually care about – it’s just a f***ing rose."
  Phillips also said in March 2019 that she would "leave her son on the steps of Downing Street" after it was announced that her son's school would finish earlier on a Friday due to budget cuts.
  In 2019, a controversy emerged as local Muslim parents in Saltley, Birmingham, associated with the Parkfield Community School, objected to lessons on relationships and inclusivity (including but not limited to teaching acceptance of LGBT people), being taught to their primary school children as part of Andrew Moffat's "No Outsiders" programme, on the grounds that LGBT relationships were immoral: one campaigner stated, "Morally, we do not accept homosexuality as a valid sexual relationship to have,” while others misunderstood the lessons to be teaching children about gay sex. Phillips spoke out publicly against the objecting parents, claiming to feel "bereft about this" and that the material was in her view not "inappropriate." Phillips called for an exclusion zone to prevent protests outside Anderton Park Primary School in Balsall Heath against lessons on inclusivity.
caption: Phillips in 2017
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