Bridget Phillipson has acknowledged that “all of us as women in society are unsafe” after female residents of an Oxfordshire village warned they feared for their security if more than 1,000 male asylum seekers are housed at a nearby former military base.
The comments from the women and equalities minister came as the government faced mounting opposition to plans to accommodate 1,256 male asylum seekers at the former Ministry of Defence site near Piddington.
The proposal has become a flashpoint in the national debate over asylum accommodation, prompting a symbolic independence referendum in the village. Piddington subsequently voted overwhelmingly in favour of “independence”, with 285 residents backing the motion and 26 voting against, according to the Standard.
A group of 133 female residents sent an open letter to every female MP the day after the vote, warning: “as fellow women, you will understand the serious risks this will expose us to” and “we will not feel safe walking our streets. We are already living in fear”.
Asked whether the women were right to raise concerns about their safety, Phillipson told Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: “Sadly, yes, women are right to be fearful in society more widely about the attitudes and the normalisation of attitudes towards women and violence against women that I’d hoped we’d made more progress on, and I hoped we put behind us.”
The minister continued: “The reality is, of course, most women who experience violence in our country experience it from a partner or a former partner and many women lose their lives to that violence, but that’s the end point.
“The starting point is some of the harmful and toxic and terrible attitudes that women are experiencing and are exposed to, and that’s why it has to be all of us pulling together to take action.”
She added: “Sadly all of us as women in society are unsafe, that is the culture that we have right now in our country where women on the streets are harassed, where women can’t even go to gigs without facing sexual assault or intimidation, and where young girls in our schools are exposed to harmful language – that’s what has to shift.
“Whilst yes we should look at individual cases – and I’m not for one second seeking to minimise the concerns that those women raise – this is part of a much bigger challenge that we all of us have to tackle together.”
The comments come against a backdrop of intense local opposition to the proposed site, which residents argue is unsuitable for accommodating such a large population of young men close to a small rural community.
The Standard reported that Piddington has about 350 residents, meaning the proposed accommodation would be several times larger than the village’s existing population.
Local campaigners have also raised concerns about the site’s infrastructure and access. A parish councillor told the Press Association that the nearest pedestrian path was about a mile and a quarter away along an unlit, busy road. Government documents reportedly describe pedestrian access as “limited” and say walking from the site is “not recommended”.
Phillipson said Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood would ensure security was provided at the site if the plans went ahead.
“We have many people within our country that we are required to accommodate, we want to reduce that number, and we are reducing that number”, Ms Phillipson added.
She also told the programme: “We will look very carefully at any concerns anyone raises, of course women feeling safe in our country is a top priority for me.”
The government has argued that former military sites can provide a way of reducing reliance on expensive hotels while the asylum backlog is processed.
A Home Office spokesman said previously that ministers were working to “fairly house asylum seekers” and would engage local authorities and police forces to ensure the safety and security of surrounding areas.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey sought to separate opposition to the Piddington proposal from a broader claim that migrants represented a threat.
He said “the vast majority” of migrants coming to the UK would not be a threat.
Davey also rejected the suggestion that backing the residents put him “on the same side” as Reform UK.
Sir Ed told the BBC’s Sunday Morning with Laura Kuenssberg: “I think we’d be on the same side as the residents.”
The Lib Dem MP for Bicester and Woodstock, Calum Miller, “has been showing that you can make good decisions about where asylum seekers have to go, and bad decisions, and the proposal to locate lots of young men on that ex-MoD site is a very bad decision”, Sir Ed said.
Davey argued that the central issue was not whether asylum seekers should be accommodated, but how quickly their claims were processed.
The correct way to handle migration is to process asylum applications far faster, meaning “we could deport those who have no right to be here, and move people who have a right to be here to get on with their lives out of the hotels”, he said.
The dispute leaves ministers balancing competing pressures: the need to reduce the asylum accommodation bill and move people out of hotels, against demands from local communities for greater consultation and stronger assurances over security.
For Piddington, the confrontation has become an unusually visible test of that policy. What began as a dispute over the use of a former military site has escalated into a national argument over the distribution of asylum accommodation, local consent and women’s safety — with the government under pressure to demonstrate that its effort to dismantle the hotel system will not simply transfer the political and financial burden elsewhere.
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