Laura Perrins: Congratulations on your election to the Women and Equalities Committee. The WEC, to me, is part of the feminist cabal that likes to paint all women as victims and claim special privileges for women. How will you cope listening to the misinformation?
Philip Davies MP: As the only hardliner on the Justice Select Committee with 10 bleeding heart liberals on there, I am used to holding a minority opinion on a select committee. I will start on the committee with an open mind and listen to the arguments made and also to the evidence. If the evidence is there to justify their opinions I will support them, if the evidence isn’t there I will highlight that and ask for it. I have no problem listening to what others have to say; the problem I have is getting others to listen to an opinion they don’t have.
LP: What is the grand plan now that you are on the committee?
PD: There is no plan as such, aside from to play an active role in the committee’s work and deliberations. If I can put forward an alternative perspective that is not otherwise heard on the committee then that can only be a good thing. Group think on any committee is never good.
LP: It will be difficult to get the committee to listen to your concerns on issues that concern men, such as the suicide rate, the justice gap, and the under-education of working class boys. What is your top priority?
PD: It will not be for me to decide the enquiries the committee holds, but whatever they are I will contribute and try to ask the difficult and awkward questions that may not otherwise be asked. Overall my top priority will be to argue for true equality and against so-called positive discrimination.
LP: My big issue with these committees is that they seem to believe that women exist in isolation from men, when their fortunes and futures are interlinked and interdependent. In truth this committee should be abolished?
PD: I have made no secret of the fact that the committee should be called the Equalities Committee rather than the Women and Equalities Committee. It always surprises me that people cannot see the irony of arguing one minute for gender equality and then in favour of a committee which only focuses on one gender.
LP: In my opinion inequalities that do exist run along class not gender lines. It is ridiculous for instance to say a middle class girl in school is disadvantaged by virtue of her sex compared to a white working class boy. We know statistically her future is much brighter than his. It is just extraordinary that the feminists can get away with this kind of nonsense?
PD: There are issues that disproportionately affect women, there are issues that disproportionately affect men – the committee should be happy to look at both, but yes, there are also issues that disproportionately affect working class people and we shouldn’t be afraid to look at those issues as well. I hope the committee will be open to seeking equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome, and not seeing everything in terms of gender when other factors may occasionally be more important.
(Image: Mark Hakansson)
