Jessica Rose Phillips (; born 9 October 1981) is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Birmingham Yardley since 2015. A member of the Labour Party, she served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls from July 2024 to May 2026.
Phillips was appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) 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 said she would "find it incredibly difficult" to continue as an MP if Corbyn were re-elected as Labour leader. She supported Owen Smith in the failed attempt to replace Corbyn in the 2016 leadership election. Phillips was a candidate for Labour leader in the 2020 leadership election, but withdrew early in the contest.
Early life and career Jessica Phillips was born on 9 October 1981 in Birmingham. The youngest of four children, Phillips is the daughter of Stewart Trainor, a teacher, and Jean Trainor (née Mackay), an NHS administrator who rose to become deputy chief executive of the NHS Confederation and chair of South Birmingham Mental Health Trust. They were politically active; in March 2016, she told Rachel Cooke of The Observer: "Growing up with my father was like growing up with Jeremy Corbyn." Phillips grew up in Kings Heath. Her mother also worked for the RSPCA.Birmingham Mail Thursday 6 March 1986, page 47
Phillips went to King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Girls, a local grammar school. Her childhood ambition was to become Prime Minister.
Phillips studied economic and social history and social policy at the University of Leeds from 2000 to 2003. She has said she marched in protest against the Iraq War. From 2011 to 2013, she studied for a postgraduate diploma in public sector management at the University of Birmingham.
Phillips worked for a period for her parents at their company, Healthlinks Event Management Services. From 2010 onwards, Phillips worked for the Women's Aid Federation of England as a business development manager, responsible for managing refuges for victims of domestic abuse in Sandwell in the West Midlands.
Phillips left the Labour Party during the years of Tony Blair's leadership, rejoining after the 2010 general election. Her period at Women's Aid as an administrator made Phillips "utterly pragmatic... I learned that my principles don't matter as much as people's lives." In the 2012 local elections, she was elected as a Labour councillor for the Longbridge ward, taking the seat from the Conservatives. She was then appointed as the victims' champion at Birmingham City Council, lobbying police and criminal justice organisations on behalf of victims. She also served on the West Midlands Police and Crime Panel.
Parliamentary career
1st term (2015–2017) Phillips was selected from an all-women shortlist to contest Birmingham Yardley in June 2013, which was then represented by John Hemming of the Liberal Democrats. At the 2015 general election, Phillips was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Birmingham Yardley, winning with 41.5% of the vote and a majority of 6,595 votes. Her maiden speech concerned homelessness and "improving [Britain]'s response to victims of domestic and sexual violence and abuse in all its forms."
In the 2015 Labour leadership election, Phillips nominated Yvette Cooper for Labour leader and Tom Watson for deputy leader.
Phillips was appointed as the Parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to Lucy Powell, the Shadow Secretary of State for Education, in September 2015.
In June 2016, she resigned as PPS to Lucy Powell, following the resignation of Powell and other Shadow Cabinet members over the leadership of Corbyn. In July 2016, Phillips threatened to resign from the Labour Party and sit as an independent MP if Corbyn was re-elected as leader of the party, stating she would find it "incredibly difficult" to continue serving under Corbyn's leadership. She supported Owen Smith in the failed attempt to replace Corbyn in the 2016 Labour leadership election.
In September 2016, she was elected chair of the Women's Parliamentary Labour Party (WPLP), defeating her predecessor Dawn Butler, considered a Corbyn ally.
2nd term (2017–2019)
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". At the snap 2017 general election, Phillips was re-elected as MP for Birmingham Yardley with an increased vote share of 57.1% and an increased majority of 16,574 votes. Upon her victory, she continued her criticisms of Hemming.
Following the 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, 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 that they saw homosexual relationships as an invalid sexual relationship to have, while others misunderstood the lessons to be teaching children about gay sex. Phillips spoke out publicly against the objecting parents, saying she felt "bereft about this" and that the material being used in the school to teach was not, in her view, "inappropriate". Phillips called for an exclusion zone to prevent protests outside Anderton Park Primary School in Balsall Heath against lessons on inclusivity.
3rd term (2019–2024)
In October 2019, Phillips said she thought Labour was unlikely to win a majority in a general election. She said if Labour was not elected the biggest party, Corbyn should resign as party leader, whereupon she might stand for the position. In November 2019, it was announced Phillips was re-selected for the Labour Party in Birmingham Yardley. She was again re-elected at the 2019 general election, with a slightly decreased vote share of 54.8% and a decreased majority of 10,659.
During the years 2020 to 2022, Phillips received the second highest income on top of her MP's salary amongst Labour Party MPs, mainly from writing and broadcasting work.
Leadership bid Following Corbyn's decision to step down as Labour leader after the party's defeat in the general election, Phillips was suggested as a potential successor. The first poll of Labour members suggested she could secure 12% of first-preference votes in a leadership competition, putting her third behind Sir Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey.
Phillips announced her bid for the leadership on 3 January 2020 in Grimsby, a seat the Conservative party had gained from Labour in the election. She was the third candidate to announce, following Emily Thornberry and Clive Lewis. Phillips acknowledged her performance in the first candidate hustings was poor, writing "I was awful because I was trying to hit a million different lines and messages in 40 seconds." She dropped out of the leadership election campaign on 21 January, during the second stage of obtaining nominations from trade unions, affiliate bodies and local parties and subsequently announced her support for Lisa Nandy.
Appointment to the Shadow Frontbench Phillips was appointed by Keir Starmer to serve as Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding, a position in the Shadow Home Office, on 9 April 2020. It was the first time she had served on the shadow frontbench.
She resigned from her position following a vote on a ceasefire in the Gaza war on 15 November 2023. In her resignation letter, Phillips said the decision to resign was with a heavy heart, adding that "I can see no route where the current military action does anything but put at risk the hope of peace and security for anyone in the region now and in the future."
Parliamentary Standards In May 2022, Phillips narrowly avoided being referred to the Parliamentary Committee on Standards after being investigated by the Commissioner for Standards for repeatedly failing to register interests within the required timescale. She accepted that she had breached the rules, and the matter was resolved through the rectification process.
4th term (2024–) Phillips was again re-elected at the 2024 general election with a greatly decreased vote share of 31.2% and a decreased majority of only 693. She described it as the 'worst election I have ever stood in'.
On 9 July 2024, she was appointed a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, which she said was with responsibility for safeguarding and violence against women and girls.
On 12 May 2026, amid growing calls for the resignation of Prime Minister Keir Starmer following landslide local‑election losses of more than 1,400 Labour seats, Phillips submitted her letter of resignation from the role of Safeguarding Minister.
Political views
Party issues Phillips verbally clashed with fellow Labour MP Diane Abbott on 14 September 2015 over the gender composition of Jeremy Corbyn's first Shadow Cabinet. After she asked Corbyn why he had failed to appoint a woman to shadow the great offices of state, Abbott accused her of being "sanctimonious" and said that Phillips was "not the only feminist in the PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party]". Corbyn did not intervene. Owen Bennett wrote in The Huffington Post that Phillips recounted: "I roundly told her to fuck off." When asked what Abbott did after that suggestion, Phillips replied: "She fucked off." According to Abbott in a January 2018 Guardian interview: "Jess Phillips never told me to fuck off. What was extraordinary is that she made a big deal of telling people she had." Phillips later apologised.
Phillips told Owen Jones in December 2015 that she had told Corbyn and his staff "to their faces: 'The day that ... you are hurting us more than you are helping us, I won't knife you in the back, I'll knife you in the front, if it looked as though he was damaging Labour's chances of winning the next general election. Responding to criticism about her use of language, Phillips said on Twitter: "I am no more going to actually knife Jeremy Corbyn than I am actually a breath of fresh air, or a pain in the arse."
Phillips is a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel.
Sex and gender equality