Ask for Angela: Jess Phillips MP went undercover to check scheme

A authorities minister has revealed she covertly examined the Ask for Angela security scheme at venues throughout the UK till she turned too well-known to proceed the undercover checks.

The scheme, launched in 2016 and named after Angela Crompton who was killed by her husband, permits individuals to discreetly sign they need assistance by utilizing a code phrase at taking part venues.

Jess Phillips, minister for safeguarding and violence in opposition to ladies and women, disclosed her secret visits after a BBC investigation discovered greater than half of taking part venues did not implement the scheme correctly.

Ms Phillips says she discovered the response within the pubs and bars she checked herself wholly unsatisfactory.

“I’ve examined the Ask for Angela system quite a lot of occasions, not simply in London, however across the nation and the place I see it,” Ms Phillips instructed the BBC.

“And I’ve to say, I’ve at all times discovered the response wanting.”

Ms Phillips added that she “likes to check” security techniques like Ask for Angela, however has turn into too well-known now to proceed.

Her feedback got here after BBC undercover researchers posed as a pair on a date, with a feminine researcher approaching bar employees showing distressed and asking for Angela.

The investigation discovered widespread confusion amongst employees, with many utterly unaware of what the codeword meant regardless of their venues displaying Ask for Angela posters.

At greater than half of the 25 London venues examined, employees had been utterly unaware of what the emergency codeword meant regardless of their venues displaying Ask for Angela posters.

The BBC obtained comparable studies from across the UK.

Ms Phillips praised the BBC’s investigation, saying she felt “actually grateful to the great work completed by BBC London in highlighting that”.

The minister, who beforehand labored growing companies for victims of home abuse at Girls’s Support within the West Midlands, emphasised that security schemes had been “meaningless in case you do not implement issues correctly on the bottom”.

She stated: “None of those schemes are ever match for objective if they aren’t educated correctly.

“New legal guidelines, issues written down on fancy scrolls that sit within the basement of the Home of Commons… that is meaningless in case you do not implement issues correctly on the bottom.”

Her feedback come after the federal government introduced new coaching initiatives round spiking.

Ms Phillips confused the significance of sustaining ongoing coaching fairly than “pink washing” venues by merely displaying posters.

Following the BBC investigation, Cambridgeshire, West Midlands and Hertfordshire police forces introduced that they had carried out spot checks. The BBC findings mirror comparable failures within the scheme’s implementation reported by ladies’s security teams throughout different elements of the UK.

Employees at massive chains together with Greene King and JD Wetherspoon had been amongst those that didn’t recognise the code phrase.

Greene King stated it was involved by the BBC’s findings and pledged to evaluation how the scheme was communicated to its groups, whereas JD Wetherspoon stated it will present further coaching if vital.

Westminster Metropolis Council presently makes participation within the Ask for Angela scheme a key issue when deciding to grant alcohol licences.

A whole lot of hundreds of kilos of public cash has been spent selling the initiative by police and native councils.

The protection scheme has since unfold to different international locations together with Canada and the Netherlands.

Further reporting by Barry Caffrey