rose to call attention to the case for a women's justice board to oversee the treatment of and conditions for women in the criminal justice system; and to move for Papers.

My Lords, in moving this Motion I am very conscious that this is by no means the first time that this issue has been brought before your Lordships' House. In preparing for the debate, I looked up the last time that women in prison were debated. In a debate in October 2004, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, in summing up as Minister for the Home Office, said:

"When noble Lords read this debate in Hansard, they will see that what I am basically describing is the women's justice board, which was advocated but has not yet been created by the Home Office. I supported it from this Dispatch Box when I was a Home Office Minister. It has still not been brought about, but I think that we are doing it in all but name. The proof will be in the pudding. It is not my job to make policy on the hoof. Nevertheless, the recommendation was made and it has widespread support, but it has not been put into operation by the Home Office".—[Hansard, 28/10/04; col. 1418.]

My reason for initiating the debate was triggered by the recent announcement of the re-roling of Brockhill women's prison in Worcestershire into a male prison; and particularly by a comment about that by my successor Anne Owers in her annual report as Chief Inspector of Prisons for 2004–05. She said:

"The proposal to re-role Brockhill suggests inadequate attention to, and even marginalisation of, the needs of women. Eighty per cent of the adult women lived within 50 miles of the prison, and many were trying to maintain contact with families and dependent children. A brand-new, purpose-built and much needed detoxification and healthcare centre had recently been built, to meet the specific needs of women".

In preparing for the debate I also contacted a number of people. I was particularly interested in a comment from Madeleine Moon, the Labour MP for Bridgend. She bemoaned that in addition to what had happened, it made it even more difficult for women from Wales to go to a women's prison near that province.

This is not a new problem. Indeed, looking back over the history of the Prison Service, you see that frequently there have been disasters followed by various inquiries which resulted in change, but unless there is a disaster there does not seem to be change. The riots in Strangeways in 1990 were followed by one of the great penal documents of all time, in which my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf and my predecessor, Sir Stephen Tumim, made the most perceptive comments about what should happen and, in particular, concentrated on appropriate management. In 1993 and 1994, there were escapes from the high security prisons at Whitemoor and Parkhurst, which were investigated by a retired Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Sir John Woodcock, and a former companion of mine, Sir John Learmont. They recommended the appointment of a director of high security prisons, the result of which has been one part of the Prison Service with someone responsible and accountable for all those prisoners and, until this year, no escape from a high security prison. I was told that the reason people were so keen on that was to avoid embarrassing Ministers. It did, however, result in the sacking of the director-general of the Prison Service.

When I inspected Holloway, my first inspection as Chief Inspector of Prisons in December 1995, I was absolutely appalled by what I found. Of the myriad memories I have of that, three things stand out. The first was finding that women were routinely chained while in labour. That must have been known to the prison authorities, and by implication to Ministers, and yet it was being condoned. The second was being shown the official Prison Service forms on which injuries to women prisoners were recorded. The forms contained the outline of a male body because the service had no forms for women. The third was going after the inspection to see the director-general of the Prison Service, asking whether I could meet the director of women and being told that there wasn't one. When I asked who laid down the policy for women, he said: "A civil servant in the policy office". I then asked, "Who oversees that policy?", and was told that it was the area manager. I went on to ask, "Who sees to it that there is consistency of policy between what happens to women in a prison in Lancashire and those in a prison in London?". The reply was, "No one".

On the question of time, that conversation with the director-general of the Prison Service took place the equivalent of the whole of World War I and the whole of World War 2 bar the last three months ago—and still there is no director of women, although there has been one on the way.

I decided that I should have a report to carry out a thematic review of women in prison. I should like to read out a paragraph from my preface to that report, written in July 1997:

"Central to this report is our strongly held view that the women's prison system ought to be managed, as an entity, by one Director, with responsibility and accountability for all that happens within the women's estate. As is pointed out over and over again, there is an urgent need for a thorough analysis of the needs of women prisoners, and a national strategy for implementing and managing policies appropriate to satisfying them. The present system of geographical management works positively against the all-important consistency that the treatment of such a separate group of prisoners requires. Our recommendations are, I hope, clear and unambiguous, and are put forward for examination by the Prison Service in the context of their own strategic review of the estate. But they also have an underlying purpose, which is to encourage the Prison Service to make better arrangements for the separate management of the fast-rising numbers of women in prison, and to provide regimes appropriate to their needs, not merely to adapt those designed for men. This does not require another policy desk, it requires someone charged with implementing policy, as well as assessing, obtaining and allocating the necessary resources of staff, money and facilities".

I had 160 recommendations, of which I will mention only two. First, transitional prisons in urban centres should be developed to serve the resettlement needs of female prisoners. Secondly, managers in women's prisons should give more emphasis to ensuring that the suicide prevention system is used properly.

Since then, I have counted 31 reports of various kinds from various organisations, all saying roughly the same as we said in 1997. As my successor illustrated in a report that she published only this year, much of that remains to be done. I should like to quote from some of the reports. Justice for Women: the need for reform, published by the Prison Reform Trust in 2000, made the specific recommendation that a national women's justice board should be established forthwith as a separate authority, charged with the development and implementation of policy for women offenders, consistent with all the principles. That should cover women's supervision, rehabilitation and support centres, for which a network was recommended; geographically dispersed custodial units to replace the existing system, which has silos in inappropriate places; and a great amount of attention to transition between prison and the community.

That was followed by a follow-up report of mine, published in 2001. I went through all the recommendations that I had made and found that an awful lot had not been achieved. That was followed by a very good report from the Commission on Women and the Criminal Justice System, by the Fawcett Society, which contains a number of very relevant points. The commission was chaired by Vera Baird MP, and in its report, published in 2004, it talks about women faring particularly badly in the system because their specific needs are not being looked at. It talked about a review which had been carried out by the Prison Service in which a separate management system had been put in place but was now dismantled. We were concerned that without a specific structure to deal with women offenders at both policy and operational level, the National Offender Management Service will fail to address fully the nature of female offending.

There have been two follow-up reports, which I do not have time to quote, both saying the same thing. As they pointed out, it has been said that a women's operational management board is not needed because the Minister who is replying to this debate and, at that time, the two Ministers responsible for penal affairs in the House of Commons, the chief executive of the National Offender Management Service and the National Offender Manager were all women. It was therefore felt that there was no need for anyone else to consider women's issues.

I fear that the evidence, particularly that produced by my successor, suggests that that is not so. I quote from her last study, entitled Women in Prison, in which she says:

"The assignment of a single operational manager to manage women's prisons in 2000 brought about greater consistency and more sharing of best practice . . . However, during 2004, the women's estate was disbanded and the management of women's prisons reverted to local areas. This has raised significant concerns that women-specific policies and procedures may be diluted or lost; particularly as there is now no specific policy lead for women within the National Offender Management Service. It is imperative that finances are ring-fenced for the women's estate as well as pressure applied to ensure that these policies and procedures are fully implemented".

I have quoted all those people because they are experts in this field and they are all speaking from experience. What you are hearing is the true voice of people who have been looking and reporting on the facts.

The aim given to the criminal justice system in 1997 was to protect the public by preventing crime. It is a good aim, but it was given to the wrong people. The prison and probation services are engaged only when a crime has been committed. The aim is to prevent reoffending or, as was so well put by the governor of a young offender establishment, to prevent the next victim. That matches very neatly with the statement of purpose of the Prison Service, which is:

"It is our duty to keep securely those committed by the courts, to treat them with humanity and to help them to lead useful and law-abiding lives".

To do that effectively the Prison Service has to make provision for many different types of prisoner, with their myriad different problems, and to put in place a management structure that can ensure that their treatment and conditions match the statement of purpose. Exactly the same applies to the probation service with its responsibility for all those who have to serve their sentence in the community.

My case for the appointment of a women's justice board, already recognised by the Government as I have just quoted, boils down to this. The needs of women of whatever age who come into the hands of the criminal justice system are different from those of men, as are the domestic pressures with which they have to cope, including family responsibilities. If they are to be helped to live useful and law-abiding lives, those differences need to be recognised and appropriate treatment and conditions provided. There are far too many women in prison and far too many are held far too far away from their domestic and family responsibilities. I am therefore extremely interested to know what factors allowed the Minister to make the change at Brockhill, as opposed to the other factors that must have been put to her for leaving it where it was. It is the only women's prison in the West Midlands. With 80 per cent of the people there within 50 miles of home, it was the best situated prison in the country for them.

We are continually hearing extolled the virtues of the vision of NOMS—because NOMS is not yet a reality. The reality is that it is 1,647 civil servants and two additional tiers of management. It is not much else at the moment. One of the Government's successes has been the formation of the Youth Justice Board, particularly the multidisciplinary youth offending teams, which are part of the responsibility of local authorities. In recommending a women's justice board along the lines of that proposed by the Prison Reform Trust, I am also recommending the formation of adult offending teams—male and female—also to be the responsibility of local authorities. The beauty of that concept is that it makes provision for local agencies—public, private, and not for profit—to be included in work done with local offenders. Moreover, if the supervision of less serious offenders were made the responsibility of such offending teams, it would free up the desperately overstretched probation service to concentrate on the heavy-end offenders—offenders whose treatment, or lack of it, continues to excite hysterical attention in the media.

I hope that the Government will look at all the facts and evidence and realise how often so many people have already put the proposal to them. Rather than yet another report—and this is not an aspersion at all on the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, who has been given yet another report to do—instead of programmes, bodies and everything else, the Government should consider history. It tells us that necessary change happens only when someone is made responsible and accountable for it. That is what this board would do. I beg to move for Papers.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for securing this debate. It is simply a coincidence that this issue is being debated on the day that the Zahid Mubarek inquiry report is published. The report contains 88 major recommendations and it may take about a week to digest, but I am sure that there will be another day to debate its contents.

There is a common theme of systematic disadvantage faced by women as victims, offenders and practitioners. Women are pushed into a system designed by men for men. Female and male offenders have different needs due to their different backgrounds and patterns of offending. There has been a disproportionate rise in the number of women in prison—up by 126 per cent over the past decade, compared with a 46 per cent rise in the male prison population.

The gender equality duty comes into force in April 2007. It will require public bodies, including government departments and criminal justice agencies, to take account of the different needs of women suspects, defendants, offenders and prisoners. At this time of ongoing reforms to the criminal justice system, there is an urgent need for a strategy to ensure equality for women in the system and for a structure at senior level to ensure the implementation of this strategy. These are the conclusions reached by the Commission on Women and the Criminal Justice System. I declare an interest as a member of that commission.

It is at this point that an unequivocal statement of policy is not enough; we need a comprehensive strategy, cutting across government departments and voluntary sector agencies that are involved in such work. We also need to understand the relationship between victimisation and offending. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is right to draw attention to the need to look at all parts of the criminal justice system. We should include in that the voluntary agencies and other statutory agencies to ensure that that relationship is understood. There are undoubtedly a large number of women in prison who have a history of abuse or victimisation, which often leads to self-harm.

Another area of serious concern is how the criminal justice system is perceived by victims of rape and domestic violence. They are poorly treated throughout the system and have low reporting rates. I commend those police forces that have made real efforts in recent years, but it is still the case that the treatment of victims varies significantly between and within police forces. We have to take a serious look at why convictions for rape have remained almost static. The justice gap between reports and convictions is very wide.

I am delighted that the Home Office has welcomed the commission's report. We await the Minister's observation as to how its recommendations will be implemented, but let me offer a solution that I am sure the Minister will welcome. I have often argued in your Lordships' House about extending the role of the Youth Justice Board; I am now more than convinced that there is a powerful case to set up a women's justice board, because to a large extent we fail to deal with women who are victimised and women who offend.

The criminal justice system is compartmentalised to take into account the special and separate needs of women. We can tamper with existing systems, but that has not delivered and is unlikely to have an impact on matters affecting women. A new direction is necessary. Over the past decade, the courts have responded to the growing mood of toughness in penal policy by adopting a more punitive stance towards women offenders. The number of women in prisons has risen more than twice as fast as the number for the male prison population, but most women who are sent to prison are neither violent nor dangerous and the Majority have few previous convictions. The rapidly rising use of prison for women is not due to a rising tide of female violence; it is mainly due to the courts' greater readiness to lock up non-violent women offenders.

Research shows that most women prisoners were living in poverty before going to prison and often faced multiple debts. The process of imprisonment frequently results in women losing their accommodation and possessions and increased destitution on release, pushing them further into a downward spiral of hardship. Many women prisoners are the mothers of young children. While the mothers are in prison, those children have to be taken into care or looked after under makeshift arrangements involving relatives, which can adversely affect their long-term intellectual and emotional development and be the cause of later delinquency or instability. That means that policies supposedly intended to prevent crime are increasingly likely to be a cause of crime in future generations.

Against this background, what is the case for the establishment of a women's justice board? There is no doubt that the Youth Justice Board has significantly improved arrangements for dealing with juvenile offenders. There is an equally strong case for the establishment of a women's justice board. The needs of women offenders are sufficiently distinct to justify establishing a board with the task of ensuring that provision for women offenders meets their special needs. Because women offenders are a minority of those coming before the courts and an even smaller minority of those in prison, their special needs are much more likely to be overlooked if they remain as an afterthought tacked on to a system that is largely geared to the needs of men.

In what ways are women offenders' characteristics and needs different from those of male offenders? First, a much higher proportion of women prisoners than male prisoners have mental health problems. Surveys show that more women prisoners have a psychiatric history before entering prisons. Many more have a history of self-harm than do male prisoners. More have personality disorders, neurotic disorders, learning disabilities and problems of substance abuse, and more have more than one diagnosis. Many more women prisoners have suffered past physical or sexual abuse at the hands of adult partners.

Secondly, a much higher proportion of women prisoners are sole carers for young children. In most cases where male prisoners are parents of young children, the child's mother is looking after them on the outside. In only a quarter of cases of mothers in prisons are the children being looked after by the current or former partner. There is another factor. Women are much more likely to be in prison a long way away from their home. This makes visits for the children and other relatives more difficult. With the mounting pressure of numbers, that problem has grown, as women are increasingly transferred to whichever prison, anywhere in the country, has a vacancy.

The number of female prisoners from minority ethnic groups is even more disproportionate than is the case for male prisoners. Some 31 per cent of the female prison population are from racial minorities, compared with 24 per cent of the male prison population. In addition to the problems usually associated with imprisonment, such women face difficulties in coping with a different culture, language problems, isolation, lack of family contact and acute anxiety about the welfare of children, who are either in care or in poverty-stricken conditions in their own country.

A women's justice board with responsibility for commissioning provision for women offenders could set standards to ensure that provision met women prisoners' particular needs. That would include mental health services, the maintenance of family contact and culturally appropriate support for foreign nationals. A women's justice board could commission smaller units for imprisoned women, spread across the country so that women could be held nearer their families and home areas. Just as the Youth Justice Board has set itself targets to reduce the use of custody for juvenile offenders, so a women's justice board could set targets to reverse the damaging trend towards the increasing use of custody for women.

In short, the establishment of a women's justice board could be the single most important step that we could take towards improving the treatment of women offenders. We will pay a very heavy price if we fail to deliver. There must be a clear determination to reduce the female prison population. This debate is a way forward.

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for initiating this important debate. My noble friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester, who is also the bishop for prisons, regrets that he is not able to be present in your Lordships' House this afternoon, but I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this timely debate.

Your Lordships may be aware that a diocesan bishop has the privilege of paying unannounced visits to any prison in his diocese, and I for one make full use of this opportunity. I am aware that the general public, and indeed many politicians, are all too happy to ignore what might be happening behind closed doors and high walls. The mood of the popular media at present is to focus on the needs and the rights of the victims of crime. While no one can argue with that, Christians at least have a New Testament mandate to visit prisoners and to pay attention to their needs, too, and many Christians do so.

Today's debate focuses on the needs of women in the criminal justice system. It is not generally known that our Mothers' Union is working in 17 women's prisons. For example, at Eastwood Park women's prison, MU members visit the mothers and babies unit, talking to the mothers, helping them to play with their children and taking the babies out into the community to help to establish links there. That is typical of the human connections that the MU tries to make with women who feel that they might have lost everything from their former lives, something that is particularly important when women are imprisoned many miles away from family and friends and so are getting few visitors. The Mothers' Union works hard to maintain, strengthen and enhance back-home relationships so that the network of family or friends is still there on release.

From our visits, we are very aware that there are individual human beings behind any statistics that we or others might collect, but those statistics are deeply worrying. Women are two and a half times less likely to offend than men. When they do, they are more likely than men to commit acquisitive crimes. According to Home Office statistics, theft and handling stolen goods account for 60 per cent of female offending compared with 36 per cent for men. The second most common type is drug offences, accounting for 10 per cent of female offending compared with 20 per cent of male offenders. In general, women commit more minor offences, have shorter criminal careers and are less likely than men to commit violent offences. One-third of women in prison have no previous convictions and more than 70 per cent are in custody for the first time.

Women make up 6 per cent of the prison population. Given that they are such a small minority, it is not surprising that their confinement in a basically male-oriented system has damaging effects. But there is evidence that women are disadvantaged at each stage in the criminal justice process: in police custody; in relating to their lawyers; and on probation, where their rehabilitative needs are not always met by mixed-sex programmes.

In recent years, there has been a steep rise in the number of women imprisoned—a near threefold increase since 1993. This rise owes more to sentencing policy than to an increase in offending. Although there is some argument about whether women are sentenced more severely than men, a woman convicted of theft or handling in the Crown Court is twice as likely to go to prison now as in 1991, and in magistrates' courts the chance of receiving a custodial sentence has risen sevenfold.

The Majority of women offenders and prisoners have a history of suffering abuse and violence, which is interlinked with other problems. A quarter of adult women prisoners have been in care; two-thirds have a drug habit, and they tend to be more used than men to hard drugs; and 70 per cent suffer from two or more mental disorders. The consequences are seen in the incidence of self-harm and suicide in prison. In 2004, half the prisoners resuscitated following self-harm were women, and less serious self-harm is commonplace. In 2003, 30 per cent of all women prisoners had harmed themselves compared with 6 per cent of men. The number of incidents of self-harm in 2003 had doubled in two years. Fifteen per cent of suicides were by women—again, a highly disproportionate percentage.

The impact of imprisonment on women is considerable, often involving loss of accommodation and separation from children. It is estimated that almost 18,000 children are separated from their mothers each year. Then there is the impact of increased financial problems, loss of capacity for paid work and increased stress. In one survey, 38 per cent of women prisoners questioned said that they expected to be homeless on release. These problems are aggravated by the dispersion of women across the system with 19 prisons unevenly distributed across England, and none at all in Wales, leading to some women being held at long distances from home with difficulties, as I have said, in visiting and highly disruptive effects on family life. In 2004, half of women prisoners were held more than 50 miles from their home town and a quarter were held more than 100 miles away.

Despite much excellent work in difficult circumstances, prison healthcare and general treatment of women are often inadequate to meet their deep-seated needs. Mentally ill women are often over-medicated. A study at Holloway prison revealed that 33 per cent of women were taking medication on arrival but that this rose to more than 90 per cent during sentence. Substance abuse programmes are often over-subscribed and not followed through on release. Provision for those serving short sentences is particularly poor. Help with housing and employment in preparation for release is often lacking. The effect of those shortcomings is reflected in the rise in reconviction rates for women. In 1999, it had risen to 55 per cent within two years, compared with 40 per cent in the early 1990s.

The minority status of women in the prison system is reflected not only in their dispersion but in the highly disruptive relocations as a short-term response to overcrowding throughout the system—which we have heard a little about—leading to both the rapid re-roling of men's prisons to admit women and the re-roling of women's prisons to meet the problem of male overcrowding. My noble friends the Bishops of Worcester and Chelmsford tell me that the re-roling is causing major traumas at present in Brockhill and Bullwood Hall prisons. The overall effect is to intensify the mismatch between women's special needs and the available facilities and expertise.

There is a widespread recognition that the way in which women's needs are treated in the system needs to change. There is broad consensus that change needs to happen in three areas: remand and sentencing policies to take better account of women's needs; more suitable forms of punishment, making custody a genuine last resort; and better provision to prevent offending and reoffending. That is not to say that women should not be held to account and punished appropriately for particular offences, but it recognises that the prior experience, the offending profile and the practical needs of women are distinctive and need to be considered as such. Such radical innovations would require something like a women's justice board to focus on gender-specific needs, just as the Youth Justice Board has pioneered and consolidated locally based, multi-agency programmes in youth justice. I hope that the Minister in her reply will indicate that the Government are open to moving in that direction.

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend for securing this important debate. I strongly support his call for a strong, clear focus on the particular needs of women in prison. There is much ground to cover, so I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for reading from a script. I will seek to concentrate on the needs in prison of pregnant women, women giving birth and recovering from childbirth, and infants and toddlers if there is time. In particular, I shall ask the Minister for her response to the recent report by the Maternity Alliance, Getting it Right, on services for pregnant women, new mothers and babies in prison, and its call for a review of services.

Before doing so, I reiterate my support for my noble friend's call for an improved strategic focus on women in custody. We have seen significant benefits accrue to children in custody through the Youth Justice Board. Louise Casey was appointed the tsar for rough sleeping, with a target of reducing rough-sleeper numbers by two-thirds within three years. She transformed services for rough sleepers. The winter prior to her arrival, I spent one evening a week in a cold weather shelter for young people. I was appalled that the most vulnerable 18 to 25 year-olds, many of them substance misusers or with mental disorders, were being cared for by the least experienced young staff. Within a year, the new service could not have been more different. I had the pleasure of serving under the new manager of the cold weather project for several months; I admired him. In particular, he initiated weekly consultation sessions with the young people in the hostel, which were immensely successful.

I warmly welcome the review of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate's provision for children and families initiated by the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton of Upholland. The so-called children's champion, Jeremy Oppenheim, director of the National Asylum Support Service and a former director of social services, has the experience and authority to make a difference. My noble friend's call for a renewal of the focus on women has my strongest support. I have seen what a difference such a concentration can make on those who are most chaotic and on where the most resource-intensive services need to be focused.

I turn to prisons and pregnant women, new mothers, babies and toddlers, on which there is every reason to invest in the very best services. Quite apart from our concern for the welfare of those children and adults, excellent interventions at this time can help to break the cycle of criminality, anti-social behaviour and social dependency from one generation to another. Last Friday, the Cassel Hospital, a centre for the treatment of adults, adolescents and families with personality disorders, held a conference on the impact of parents' severe personality difficulties on their children's development. The Department of Health guidance on the development of services for such disorders cites the Cassel Hospital as a notable practice site. The paper, from Beate Schumacher, a psychoanalyst practising at the Cassel, highlighted that many experts considered personality disorders as being closely rooted in early parental care, particularly in care by the mother. One pattern that Ms Schumacher observed was mothers who had had empty, loveless childhoods seeking to rescue themselves by giving birth to a child. The child, to their minds, would make up for all that void. One abusive mother said:

"I can't live without my child. All he wants is me. He is my world".

Once such a mother is confronted with the reality that her child is incessantly demanding and will eventually grow away from her, she may often harm or neglect it.

The charity Mind recently arranged for a mother who had suffered from maternal depression to speak to parliamentarians. She ran her own business and was educated and affluent. In her many months of depression, she found herself taking pleasure in the tears of her baby and preparing on two occasions simply to leave that child. Some 70 per cent of women sentenced to prison have two or more mental disorders and it would be welcome if the Minister could give details of the percentage of those with personality disorders. Tessa Baraden, a child psychologist based at the Anna Freud Centre who established the infant psychotherapy service at Holloway women's prison, described many of her clients as being at the severe end of personality disorders.

To break the cycle of crime and social dependency, provision for pregnant women, new mothers and infants in prisons should be the best that we can afford. In my recent visit, it was good to see Her Majesty's Government's investment in mother and baby units at Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre—in some ways, it is an excellent facility. It is to be welcomed that child psychotherapy is being made available at Holloway prison and that it may be expanded.

The move Her Majesty's Government made in transferring responsibility for health in the Prison Service to the National Health Service has been widely welcomed. However, the important Maternity Alliance report highlights many weaknesses. Over 600 women receive ante-natal care in prison each year, with over 100 women giving birth during their sentences. Some 80 mother and baby places across England are spread between seven prisons, but provision for pregnant prisoners is inadequate, as their needs often go unmet. There is no Prison Service order on pregnancy and there are stark variations in ante-natal services across the prison estate. As there is no Prison Service order, there is no description of a minimum-standard service that the woman should receive. Therefore there is no guidance, for instance, on how to restrain an agitated or aggressive pregnant woman. There is a lack of support available for women in mother and baby units, which is particularly worrying in light of those women's increased levels of depression and anxiety. Some do not feel fully involved in a decision about their baby's future—that is also a cause for concern—and 8 per cent of those children are taken into care.

Aspects of Her Majesty's Government's policy towards these women are to be welcomed, but there are also a number of important shortcomings. It is vital that these women receive excellent support to bond well with their children and to prevent future crime or dependency. Therefore, I ask the Minister to reassure the House by saying that she will give active consideration to a review of services for pregnant women, new mothers and babies in the Prison Service, as the Maternity Alliance strongly recommends in its report. I look forward to her response.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, that once again we find ourselves in this House discussing the sad matter of women in the criminal justice system. A couple of months ago, there was an acutely depressing programme on BBC2 about the sick, damaged women sent to Styal prison in the north of England. The prison staff there had invented a new verb—to ligature. It means to try to hang yourself. The women in Styal were ligaturing at the rate of several every night. They also harmed themselves most violently. The film opened with a young woman cleaning up the blood of her latest cutting incident. The basin was filled with blood, as was the toilet bowl. That happens there several times every day.

The staff emerged from the film as undertrained, under-resourced and unsung heroes and heroines. It is good news, and something that should certainly come to the attention of this House, that the prison officer leading that team—keeping those women prisoners alive throughout the day and night—Linda Horsfield, has just been announced as the overall winner of the Prison Officer of the Year award. She is also the first woman ever to win this award. We would all wish to congratulate her, while thinking what a pity it is that she has to do what she does and that we have still not found a better way in this rich country of dealing with the most poverty-stricken and despairing women that our society produces.

Perhaps a recent case of a woman sent to prison encapsulates the sheer absurdity of our policies. Rosina Conner, a woman with seven children and heavily pregnant with her eighth child, was sent to prison for two weeks because her 14 year-old son missed a lot of school. She came out of prison saying:

"The Majority of the people on the wing I was on were heroin addicts, which is not really where I want to be".

Her partner, Darrell, said:

"I was shocked by the decision of a woman judge to send her to prison. That puts me in the situation of having to look after all the kids".

Every report written about women in prison says that they are the most vulnerable, disadvantaged and psychologically damaged members of a population that is already grossly disadvantaged. Every report written about women in prison also says that many of them should not be in prison—they need help, not punishment, as their crimes are not violent.

I suspect that the Minister will say that these women have committed serious offences and should be in prison. Indeed, some of them have—I do not deny that. But how many, I wonder, are in the category of having been charged and convicted of a serious offence, such as a threat to kill, when on analysis that turns out to be a suicidal woman saying, "Leave me alone or I'll kill you", a mentally ill woman threatening her doctor over the phone with the words, "If you don't give me the tablets, I'll come round to thump you", or a woman charged with arson because she set fire to herself and a nearby tree?

There were 4,409 women in prison last Friday and 4,501 a year ago, so we see a welcome, although small, reduction of 92. These 4,409 are part of a population of 77,711. They are scattered around England and Wales. Nothing different marks their path through the police station, the court, the report-writing, the sentencing process and the dispatch to prison, if that is the outcome, in a prison van. Only when they arrive at prison do they find themselves in a place designed for women, although even then they will find a system designed for men, with small modifications. I hope the Minister will tell me if I am wrong, but I think that nowhere in that process of arrest, charge, prosecution, social inquiry report-writing, sentencing and transport to prison will the accused and then convicted woman find herself being dealt with by someone specially trained to deal with the problems of women in trouble with the law—someone trained to recognise the special problems such women have and who has access to resources that could help them.

I understand that men, women and children are put together in a prison van, separated by metal partitions, often with no toilets or seatbelts. I quote from a letter to the Guardian from the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and others, which states:

"It is not uncommon for women to arrive after 10 at night; hungry, frightened, and having wet themselves or been sick on the way".

If sentencing courts were very enthusiastic about finding an appropriate solution other than prison—a special centre for women, a real alternative that would address women's problems—how many could find one? Certainly the courts around Hereford and Worcester would find one—the Asha Centre. Where else would courts find one? Perhaps the Minister can advise me on that.

How do women, who account for six out of 100 people in the prison system, fare as a minority? Because of their minority status they face the problem of being held far from home. I understand that last December the number held more than 100 miles from home was an improvement on the previous year, but it was still 17 per cent, and 23 per cent were held between 50 and 100 miles away. We have heard how women's prisons are vulnerable to sudden takeovers for male prisoners at very short notice. That suggests that either the management assumes that no good relationships have been built up and that no good work is going on, or if those things have happened they do not care, or perhaps they care and make representations to Ministers which are ignored. I would be grateful to know if the appropriation last month of two women's prisons for men has altered the figures on distance from home.

The minority status of women also seems to push concerns about them down the agenda. In 2002, Anne Owers inspected Styal prison. She said that the way drug-using women were being dealt with was appalling and dangerous and that there should be a detoxification programme. In 2004, two years later, the detoxification programme was set up, after the sixth death of a drug-using woman. The problem cannot be shortage of money. In 2004, £16 million was found to build new prison units for children—for girls under 18. The Minister is a very distinguished lawyer. I know the Government are committed to anti-discrimination and to equality for women. I would appreciate her honest assessment on how far many aspects of the way in which women are treated in the criminal justice system represents unlawful discrimination, and how much will have to change for us to comply with our obligations.

My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for instituting this debate, and getting us to discuss the issues of vulnerable prisoners, particularly women, yet again. I shall also briefly address the right reverend Prelate, who argued that it was a Christian tradition to visit prisoners. All the world's faiths have a tradition of looking after the vulnerable. Certainly, my own tradition believes that we should break the prisoners free from their chains, as in the Book of Isaiah.

One reason the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is right to press for a women's justice board is that some of the worst statistics come from the women's prisons, where suicide rates, as we know, are so high, where self-harm is commonplace and the care of offenders seems wholly inadequate in many cases. From 1,811 women behind bars in 1994, only 12 years ago, the figure, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, has stated, was 4,409 last Friday. The women are vastly overcrowded. Between January and June 2004, 10 women committed suicide, compared to 14 in the whole of 2003. The rates continue to rise.

As the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has said, many young offenders are parents. Facilities are inadequate both for the women who are mothers and their babies. These women are vulnerable, and the mothers are often the most vulnerable of all. Yet the Prison Service is, as a matter of course, taking babies from their mothers before they are a year old, even though most psychologists—of a variety of different opinions on almost everything else—agree that early separation can lead to long-term psychological problems for the child.

Mental illness and drug problems are commonplace. A case I find perhaps the most moving of many I have read over the last few years—to which the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, referred in her remarks on Styal—is that of Sarah Campbell from Cheshire. She came from a conservative background and eventually ended up a heroin addict. She was sentenced to three years in Styal, a women's prison, after hassling an elderly man for drugs, who, petrified by Sarah and her friends, had a heart attack and died.

Sarah had spent six months on remand and, to her great delight, had become drug free. But she was convicted of manslaughter and sent to Styal, where she took an overdose within hours of beginning her sentence and died three days before her 19th birthday. At court, before her sentence, the liaison duty probation officer and a duty psychiatric nurse both warned that she might harm herself. It made no difference. Her mother, formerly a quiet, well behaved civil servant, has become what people describe as an "angry, vociferous risk-taker". Her experience of her daughter's death, a child with a known history of depression and drug dependency, has made her so furious, and opened her eyes to the fact that women are treated with medieval barbarity by our prison system:

"More and more women are being sent to prison when clearly they should be being treated for mental illness—and conditions once they reach jail are horrific . . . I have seen women who have used scouring pads and hairgrips to maim themselves".

Women prisoners are three times as likely as their male counterparts to commit suicide, despite being only 6 per cent of the prison population. They account for about half of all incidents of self harm. Pauline Campbell, Sarah Campbell's mother, argues that women in prison are an invisible issue—not so much now, thanks to the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. Nevertheless, they do not commit violent crimes and their offences are mostly theft, drugs or unpaid Bills. Two-thirds of women in prison suffer from at least one neurotic disorder, such as depression, anxiety or phobias, and more than half suffer from a personality disorder. Among the rest of the population, as the Bromley briefings tell us so powerfully, less than a fifth of women suffer from such disorders. Half of the women in prison are on some prescribed medication, such as antidepressants or antipsychotic medicines, and there is evidence, as the right reverend Prelate said, that the use of such medication increases in custody. So what is the point?

Even more worryingly, of all the women sent to prison, some 37 per cent say they have attempted suicide at some time, and nearly two-thirds of them have a drug problem. A quarter of them were in local authority care as a child, and the picture is one of illness, depression, loneliness, and addiction: not necessarily good reasons for seeing them in prison.

In an interview in last Saturday's Daily Telegraph, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, said:

"In one women's prison there were six serious self-harm incidents a day. They were regularly cutting women down from ligatures. One woman was not only cutting her arms up but inserting Biros into her veins".

That is the situation we are seeing in our prisons. What is the point of the women being there?

Penny Mellor, a former prisoner, wrote movingly in the British Medical Journal about life in a women's prison:

"My experience inside three very different prisons was in itself very depressing; listening to the screaming and crying all night leaves you weary, alarms going off at all hours day and night as yet another inmate tries to kill themselves makes you jumpy and renders you physically exhausted, your heart sinking and your mind praying that it won't be somebody you've grown fond of that's hurt themselves; prison officers' faces etched in stress related lines as they run to unlock a door not knowing what they will find on the other side, no wonder members of the Prison Service"— the article was written some time ago—

"are looking to strike over conditions and pay".

She continued:

"If you weren't mentally ill when you went in, you certainly are after a very short space of time".

Some people might argue that that is special pleading from a former prison inmate, but it appears that it is not. Women prisoners' suicide and self-harm rates are now at a record high. The introduction of the NHS as the provider of mental health services in prisons is a good thing and is much to be welcomed, but, as yet, it has not made much difference. As Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said on launching her report on what was happening about suicide, self-harm and the mentally distressed:

"Prison is a punishment of last resort. It is cruel to lock up mentally ill women and it does lasting harm to them and their families".

Everyone agrees that prisons are not the place for vulnerable people and that women tend to be more vulnerable in prison than men. So why do the Government not listen? Perhaps the Minister can tell us whether it is just a desire to be punitive. Do they truly believe that people have a better chance of treatment for drugs and mental illnesses inside prison? Or is it simply that it would not play well in the media to say that women should not be sent to prison unless they have committed violent offences?

The interview with the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, published in last Saturday's Daily Telegraph—which is not necessarily known for its sympathetic views towards prisoners—reported:

"There has, she says, been a 'huge increase' in people in prison. 'Prisons are often acting as mental hospitals and that is not what they are designed to be,' . . . 'We are reaping the harvest of closing down our large mental hospitals without providing either proper community care or sufficient secure mental health care. That partially accounts for the overcrowding'.

"At the same time, she believes that too many drug addicts are being incarcerated when they could be treated, more cheaply and more effectively, in the community. 'I met a couple of sisters who I'd seen before in the prison. One of them said, 'I came out but got back on to drugs. I was so ill I felt I needed to get back into the safety of the prison. So I said to my sister let's go and shoplift from M&S'.

"At one women's prison, Ms Owers says, 80 per cent of the inmates are serious drug addicts. Its prisoners have two or three times the national average level of mental illness, a third of them have tried to commit suicide and most have experienced sexual abuse.

"We are expecting prisons to be our 'too difficult' tray, a place where we put people because we don't know what else to do with them . . . Prisons are not meant to be places where we mop up every social ill. They should be places to deal with, punish and deter serious criminals".

I believe that the Chief Inspector of Prisons and her predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, are right. We need a women's justice board to tackle these issues. What is going on now is unacceptable in a civilised country. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some comfort and say that the Government are changing their mind.

My Lords, with the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, introducing this debate, the most I can aspire to be is a Rosencrantz or Guildenstern to his Hamlet. I am delighted that I shall repeat some things said by other noble Lords because I believe that they merit saying again and again.

As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, stressed, my noble friend Lord Rooker in his reply to the debate on women in prison on 28 October 2004 said of a women's justice board:

"Nevertheless, that recommendation was made and it has widespread support, but it has not been put into operation by the Home Office".—[Hansard, 28/10/04; col. 1481.]

Today's debate can be summed up in two words: why not? This afternoon my noble friend has a golden opportunity to explain why not, or, better still, to change policy and accept a women's justice board.

In Justice for Women: the need for reform, the report published in 2000 of the committee on women's imprisonment, chaired by Professor Dorothy Wedderburn, the central recommendation was,

"A national women's justice board should be established immediately as a statutory commissioning body which would resemble in many respects the national Youth Justice Board".

Wedderburn envisaged a powerful authority with its own budget and management structure to oversee the arrangements for women's imprisonment and punishment in the community; to provide the driving force to establish local centres; to develop programmes based in communities; and to ensure that prisons for women are efficiently and humanely managed to provide suitable conditions and regimes. The authority would be responsible for ensuring that programmes, whether in custody or in the community, achieve not only targets such as the number of places made available or the numbers completing particular programmes but also satisfactory settlement, integration and reduced offending.

Six years have passed since Wedderburn reported without the establishment of such a potent authority. I ask the Minister to reflect on a few developments in the absence of a women's justice board. At the end of September 2004, female prisoners were held an average of 62 miles from their homes, with disturbing implications for their children. Distance was an aspect discussed by the noble Baroness, Lady Stern.

As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark pointed out, in 2003, 30 per cent of women prisoners were reported to have harmed themselves compared to 6 per cent of men. Home Office research has found that 41 per cent of women in prison did not have accommodation arranged on release; only one-third of women prisoners who wanted help and advice about benefits and debt received it; and 65 per cent of women released from prison in 2002 were reconvicted within two years of release. There can be no doubt that a vigorous women's justice board would significantly improve that dreadful picture.

The Minister is legendary for her silver tongue. May she use it now to convince her Home Office colleagues that it is essential to set up a women's justice board forthwith.

My Lords, what we have heard this afternoon from noble Lords and in particular from my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham—to whom we already owe a considerable debt of gratitude for the powerful insight into the penal system that he has brought to this House—is deeply disturbing. If your Lordships needed any further convincing of the importance of retaining a separate and fully independent inspector of prisons, what my noble friend and other noble Lords have said today must have made that case crystal clear. Of course, we shall return to that debate during the Committee stage of the Police and Justice Bill.

The Government's recent closure of two women's prisons can only be explained by their need to house ever more male prisoners as we creep closer to complete saturation point in all prisons. As we have heard, the latest closure has left the West Midlands completely without a women's prison. As I understand it, Brockhill was a new, purpose-built prison with treatment facilities expressly designed to meet the complex needs of vulnerable women. Moreover, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, the Majority of its inmates' homes were within a reasonable distance, which meant that those women prisoners remained secure, in a purpose-built prison, within reasonable contact distance of their families. No longer. One wonders where they are now. I suspect—indeed, I fear—that they are scattered around the country constantly on the move. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us a rather more satisfactory answer than that which I fear.

Given the Government's recent emphasis on the need to rethink their policy to deal with women offenders, their recent actions are all the more puzzling. There have been the Styal prison suicides; the many incidents of self-harm; the fact that the number of women imprisoned has almost doubled—the figure has been repeated again—from 2,600 in 1997 to 4,409 last Friday, up from 3 per cent to 6 per cent of the prison population; and the setting up of the year-long review, under the leadership of the noble Baroness, Lady Corston. All those facts have prompted the acceptance by the Government of the need for a different approach.

Yet here we are only two days away from the end of June, the date by which we were promised an interim report from the Corston review, but the Home Office, as we have heard, apparently no longer even has a separate unit to deal with women offenders. So it seems quite clear that women have become the group worst hit by the prison accommodation crisis. Whether or not a women's justice board will ever be achieved, it is clearly essential that someone is there to be held accountable, and quickly.

We all know that, although some offenders must be imprisoned, the intended rehabilitation side of prison is not working. It is only too well known that two-thirds of prisoners are currently reconvicted within two years. In 1992, that figure was half of all prisoners, which was bad enough.

The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale—perhaps significantly the only woman so far to have become a Law Lord—put her views on women in the prison system very clearly when delivering the Longford lecture last December. Her view—confirmed by my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham—is that the whole working of the prison system is predefined by exclusively male perceptions, which are nevertheless applied to women, despite important differences in their temperament, physique, make-up and lifestyle. That absolutely confirms my perception from some years ago, when I served as a member of the Parole Board.

There are several reasons why I—and, clearly, other noble Lords—believe that the way in which women are treated should be made far more relevant to their lives and their needs. First, although the percentage that they represent is small, women are likely to be the most vulnerable members of the general prison population. They are more likely to have suffered violence and sexual abuse in their early days. In Care, concern and carpets, the Howard League reports that 50 per cent have experienced domestic violence and 33 per cent have suffered sexual assault. So, naturally, they are more in need of specialist help and treatment.

Secondly, because women are still the main carers in the family, they have a greater importance for the family unit's survival. Indeed, many need urgent guidance in parenting skills, as well as the specialist medical help—which so many other noble Lords have mentioned—to deal with their almost inevitable psychological problems and addictions. Some 80 per cent of women prisoners suffer from diagnosable mental health problems, and 66 per cent are drug and alcohol addicts.

The third reason is that the majority of offences committed by women are in the less serious category. Both the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, and the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, have been critical of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which they believe has increased the number of women imprisoned due to the more severe sentences that are now required for repeat, relatively minor offences, such as shoplifting, as we have heard. Women shoplifters are, apparently, twice as likely to be locked up for that offence as they were 15 years ago.

The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, proposed in her lecture far more locally provided community sentences for women, combined with the necessary education and treatment. That would certainly have my backing. If this does happen, and if training and job experience could be included, perhaps the cycle of deprivation could at last begin to be reversed. For those women who sadly must be imprisoned, the Howard League's recommendation that a special prison adjustment unit be established in all prisons to help women prisoners to adjust to prison life, at least for their first 48 hours, is surely essential. As your Lordships know, many of the suicides mentioned took place during the first days of imprisonment. I hope that the Minister will have good news for us on this point.

Far more education, mental health and drink and drug treatment facilities are needed to deal with women's underlying need for support. At present—this is almost unbelievable—apparently only 2 per cent of the prisons budget is spent on education and training. Yet 70 per cent of all prisoners are functioning well below acceptable literacy levels, as we know, and the mental health and drug treatment facilities are completely and disgracefully inadequate.

Finally, we return to the need to concentrate help on vulnerable families from the earliest possible age. The Government have tried to make this a priority, and I congratulate them on that because that is where the maximum effort and resources are needed. We must give all children from disturbed and deprived backgrounds, but with particular attention paid to girls, the best possible chance to fulfil their potential and the five outcomes set out in Every Child Matters. When your Lordships think of the huge cost to the public purse of each citizen who ends up in prison, that must make every possible kind of sense.

My Lords, this has been a fascinating, moving and inspiring debate. In particular, I associate myself with the clarion call from the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, for early Intervention and support for families. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for giving us the opportunity to discuss these very difficult issues today.

In some respects, women offenders should not be treated any differently from men. Before everyone jumps up and shouts at me, let me explain what I mean by "some respects". I believe that all sentences should be proportionate to the offence and have the general support of the public. All should have an element of punishment to show the disapproval of society that the person has transgressed the standards approved by society. If that element can also make retribution for the harm done, so much the better. All should have a large element of rehabilitation aimed at the prevention of future offending. All should have an element of reform to ensure that the offender becomes a more useful member of society and has a happier and more fulfilling life.

We need to look at the causes of crime and ensure that those causes are addressed, as many offenders are victims themselves. By that, I mean people who have been failed by our society, education system and mental health services, as movingly described by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. These are people whom we have failed to protect from domestic or child violence, or abuse in their past, so they just repeat what they have learnt.

In all those ways, male and female offenders should receive the same consideration. However, we now come to the major differences, which have been outlined by so many noble Lords today. Many more women commit their offences because they are in the power of men. The number of women in prison has more than doubled over the past 10 years, even though crime committed by women has not increased by the same amount. Most women are imprisoned for non-violent crimes. There is therefore some evidence that women are more likely to go to prison than men for the same offence—the "too difficult tray", as described by my noble friend Lady Neuberger.

Many women commit theft or drug trafficking offences because they are poor and see it as a way to feed their children. More women than men are the principal carers of their children, so many thousands of innocent children suffer when their mothers are put in prison, often many miles away from home, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and others have said. The women suffer more, too, through custodial sentences by being deprived of their families and worrying about how their families are coping without them. You only have to look at the self-harm and attempted suicide figures, as mentioned by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark and others, to realise that. Here, like the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, I pay tribute to many of our prison staff, who are heroes and heroines and save women's lives every day. Therefore, custody is proportionately tougher on women than it is on men. That is a fact.

We find ourselves drawn to non-custodial sentences for all sorts of reasons. Sentences need to be effective as well as cost-effective. In non-custodial sentences, we have a happy confluence of the two. They are more cost-effective in cash terms and in human terms, because they enable offenders to keep their family links and to avoid the self-harm that we have been hearing about. Such sentences avoid the pressures of incarceration, which affect women more. They avoid the brutalisation of prisoners and offenders learning from others how to commit crimes that they had never thought of. Best of all, they give better opportunities for the education and rehabilitation that are so essential for the prevention of reoffending and for addressing the root causes of the crime.

What a pity that the general public seem to see community sentences as a soft option. They are not. They can contain elements of restorative justice, which can satisfy the victim but are very hard for the offender; community work, which can satisfy the community; and education and rehabilitation, which can be hard work and can correct the ways in which society has failed the offender before.

These payback and reform punishments, as I like to call them, should be the first option of courts, especially in respect of women in all cases except violent or serious crime. There should be a presumption that the offender will not go to prison, but will pay her debt to society in other ways. That is why we need a women's justice board to take a really hard look at how we treat women offenders. However, we also need it in order to look at how well served women are by the criminal justice system, since many women feel totally failed by it—the "justice gap", as my noble friend Lord Dholakia called it.

The very poor rate of conviction for rape is much discussed at the moment. Many women feel that they are not getting justice. Most complainants who get that far leave court looking glazed and emotionally destroyed, because the man whom they believe to have violated them in the most appalling way has been acquitted. They feel as though they have not been believed and that their motives in making the complaint have been questioned. Many more women either never make a complaint or pull out at an early stage when they realise what they are going to have to go through in the court. It takes a lot of courage and a lot of anger to go through with a complaint of rape.

The conviction figures are appalling, at what I think is only 5.3 per cent compared with the 80 per cent conviction rate for other serious crimes. Why is that? I think that it is because, unless it is a stranger rape, which can easily be resolved by DNA evidence and usually results in a conviction, in acquaintance rape cases the issue is not who did it but whether there was consent. The issue of consent usually has no witnesses to give corroborative evidence. It is a matter between the two of them: her word against his. This may sound straightforward, but it is not, and a whole lot of other matters cloud the issue of culpability which are very difficult for juries. Was he drunk? Was she drunk? Was she capable of giving real consent, and should he have taken it into account if she was not? Was she asleep? What should a man assume from the way a woman behaves or dresses? That is one of the trickiest questions.

In today's raunch society, some women have become their own worst enemies. What is more, they have sold out to men's values, a thing that my feminist sisters and I fought against in the 1960s. Having achieved the freedom to dress and behave as we wish, some of our gender are using that freedom to behave like men and are acting in accordance with male values, presumably in a desire to become one of the lads and be accepted by men. But most men prefer women to behave like women and would rather keep their laddish behaviour to themselves. Women need to understand that some kinds of behaviour feed men's worst prejudices about women, and they need to understand the effect of their behaviour on the men around them. In the full understanding of that, they will be able to make their decisions about how to behave in a free society. To address this problem, we need to look at what we do years before a rape ever takes places and reaches the doors of the court.

All this brings me to a very serious matter that is about to come before noble Lords in the Education and Inspections Bill. In the current climate, I cannot understand the Government's resistance to ensuring that every child has personal, social and health education at school They can learn all about the mechanics of sex in their science lessons, but only in PSHE will they have a chance to discuss issues such as personal relationships and the importance of men and women respecting and understanding each other. Unless we give our young people these opportunities, boys will think that girls mean yes when they say no, which indicates a lack of respect. Girls will think that boys will not want them unless they agree to sex, which is usually wrong. Both will underestimate the danger that they put themselves in when they get drunk. These are difficult and delicate issues where freedom, liberty and equality of the sexes need to be debated alongside the facts about what can happen to young women in this dangerous world.

In today's society, it is vital that young people have the opportunity to explore the issues that affect their health and safety as well as their future happiness. A women's justice board could look into these issues as well as into offending and sentencing and women's participation as professionals in the criminal justice system.

My Lords, after the eloquent speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, it is clear that I must reassess the role of my gender. I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for initiating this debate. The House is fortunate to have among its Members just about the most informed and influential of authorities in the country on the subject of prisons. It would be unfair to describe his speech as a wake-up call to the Government, for I am aware of the efforts made by Ministers to address this desperate problem; perhaps we can say that it is the snooze button making itself known.

The statistics regarding women prisoners speak for themselves and have been referred to by many noble Lords. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of women being incarcerated: a rise of 126 per cent between 1992 and 2002 compared with only 52 per cent for men, and so on.

This derives from the increasing tendency of courts to remand women in custody. The fact that women offenders commit fewer serious crimes and have shorter criminal careers than men is also important. Many are small players in the drugs train, often simply acting as mules. In turn, that possibly partly explains the startling rise in foreign nationals in custody, of whom about half who are convicted for drug offences are Jamaican.

The Fawcett Society points out that on the whole women receive lesser sentences than men. However, while a custodial sentence of even one year is not enough to give a woman some form of corrective training, it is quite long enough to break up a family unit. Then there is the obvious extra strain imposed by women prisoners on family life, particularly children. I believe that female prisoners across the country have an average of between two and 2.5 children. The chilling statistic from the Prison Reform Trust is that 17,000 children are separated each year from their mothers by imprisonment, and that 66 per cent of female prisoners are mothers. There is also the risk to which these children are exposed—often separated from their mothers under traumatic circumstances—of social exclusion, and of the children themselves becoming offenders in the future.

Many noble Lords have spoken eloquently on the problems of suicide and self-harm. They are much greater for women than for men and significantly greater in local prisons than in training prisons.

Then there is the factor of unintended consequences. Because there are fewer women's prisons than men's prisons, they are unevenly distributed around the country—we have heard that there are none in Wales—and the chances of women being held remote from their families is that much greater. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark reminded us, half of female prisoners are held more than 50 miles from their home town, and a quarter are held more than 100 miles away.

The subject of churning often features in these debates; it appears to be an intractable feature of the prison system, whereby convicted prisoners have to be transferred to make way for remand prisoners, who have to be kept near their court of appearance. This, again, is a particularly acute problem for women prisoners, with the additional complication of families. I would welcome the Minister's reassurance that this churning of women prisoners in particular is being reduced.

The noble Baroness, Lady Stern, reminded us of the transportation of females between prisons. Why are there no seat belts in those vehicles? It is because the authorities consider that it is probably better to have women shaken around during transportation, although in some cases they may be heavily pregnant, rather than expose them to the risk of a ligature—that awful word—if a seat belt is provided?

The case of the six women left behind in Durham prison after the transition to an all-male establishment has passed into folklore among people concerned with the welfare of women in prison. They were largely forgotten. There was a scathing report by the chief inspector following a visit in June 2006. Juliet Lyon of the Prison Reform Trust visited the six women in October 2004, and her account states:

"Last October, during a PRT visit to Durham prison, I met a woman prisoner covered in open cuts and scars lying on a mattress on her cell floor littered with blood-stained bedding and clothing. From outside the cell door also surrounded by blood-stained material, a male officer was doing his best to talk to and comfort her. The then Governor stated that this woman had been waiting for some time for a transfer to a secure hospital".

My only comment is that this was nearly two years ago, and we should give the authorities in Durham the benefit of the doubt that things have improved.

On 26 May, Cathy Stancer of Women in Prison, Juliet Lyon of the Prison Reform Trust and Deborah Coles of Inquest wrote to Dr John Reid, drawing his attention to the distance from home of many women prisoners. They made the simple and sensible suggestion that in response to the strain on accommodation of additional women prisoners and the re-roling of women's prisons to male prisons, it would be a much more effective use of resources to divert women who pose no threat to public safety to specialist drug, alcohol and mental health services, and give them the focused support they need to stop them reoffending. I would welcome a comment on that letter.

This debate is about the creation of a women's justice board. The scene was set by the publication of the Wedderburn report, a seminal document, but that was published six years ago. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, then the Lord Chief Justice, said it all in the following year:

"There should be a board responsible for women in the criminal justice system. Its responsibilities in relation to women should be similar to the Youth Justice Board. It should regard its primary responsibility to be to contain the growth of the women prison population".

The Youth Justice Board has indeed been a success, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and others have reminded us.

The Police and Justice Bill is passing through your Lordships' House as we speak. The whole of the inspectorate system is under review. There surely cannot be a better time to address with urgency the creation of a women's justice board. Many of the factors underlying women's offending such as education, employment, health, childcare and housing, lie beyond the control mechanism of the criminal justice system and the Home Office. The case has surely been made for a multi-agency approach to deal with women's offending. The Youth Justice Board does indeed straddle different agencies and has proved itself a successful body. Let this be a template for a women's justice board.

Such a board must have a wide remit. It must for instance encompass the awful problems often faced by women on release from prison. Prisoners often speak of the curiously strange world they find themselves in even after short sentences. Add to that the trauma largely peculiar to women prisoners. The Prison Reform Trust estimates that one-third of women in prison will find that they have lost their homes and possibly their possessions, as a result of incarceration. The Fawcett Society says:

"On release, women find themselves in a catch-22 situation; they have problems getting their children back if they do not have a home, but have problems in getting a home if they are not caring for their children".

They just cannot win.

The marginalisation of women prisoners has been with us for years. Because they form only 6 per cent of the prison population, it easy to see how their special needs have tended to be ignored, and, to be fair, it did not start with this Government.

I have one last thought. I once again urge the Minister to look overseas at other countries' practices. For this I am indebted to the Fawcett Society. In Russia, for example, mothers of children under the age of 14 who are convicted of all but the most serious offences are routinely given suspended sentences. In Germany, women are housed under curfew with their children in units attached to prisons but located outside the gates.

To return to the subject of this debate, something must surely be done. I fear that I am not alone in expressing my disappointment at the Minister's reply on 1 February that the Government have no plans to act on the three proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and his successor Anne Owers, all focusing on the creation of a women's justice board. Against that background, I once again thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for setting the tone for this outstandingly well informed debate. I look forward with anticipation to what the Minister has to tell us. In particular, can she give us any encouragement on the creation of a new women's justice board to fulfil the eloquent forecast of her noble friend Lord Rooker with which this debate started, along with the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham?

My Lords, I add my voice to those who have thanked the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for giving us the opportunity to debate an extremely interesting subject. I also commend my noble friend Lord Rooker for departing the moment that this debate started.

There is much with which we all agree. The background and the coalescence between the victim and the offender were graphically outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, echoing something started by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. Therefore, I start with those issues with which we all agree.

Prison is for serious, violent, dangerous and persistent offenders and should be the last resort. That is the statement made by the Government and I know from listening to the various contributions throughout the House that there is agreement on that. I assume that the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, agrees because I have never heard him dissent from it.

The importance of understanding the innate vulnerability of some of the women in our estate has to be underlined. When we say that we have to care for victims, we have to appreciate, as many noble Lords have outlined, that many of the women in our estate were in the first instance victims whose needs were not adequately addressed. I highlight the issue that has been raised by a number of noble Lords, that of domestic violence and sexual assault. Our figures indicate that between 46 and 56 per cent of the women prison population have been affected by those two things. However, when I visited Holloway prison last week, the figure given to me by the governor about women in his estate was that 76 per cent had been affected by domestic violence and sexual assault. They were at one stage victims—women who used, by way of some form of panacea, drink or drugs, became mentally ill or resorted to prostitution or acquisitive crime as a way of providing a salve for the pain that was within them.

But we must also appreciate, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, and others accept, that some women in our prison estate have created and committed very serious offences indeed. It is alarming, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, highlighted, that some women have sought to emulate some of the more aberrant behaviour of men in relation to gang culture, violence and abuse of alcohol, which has materially changed the way in which they have offended and the seriousness of those offences. As a result, we all find it depressing that over the past 10 years the number of women sentenced to determinate sentences of four years or more has increased the most—by 222 per cent to 1,322. Violence against the person accounted for 17 per cent over the past 10 years, so among the group of women for whom we care there are regrettably some very seriously dangerous and violent people. We all must acknowledge that there is an element of risk which has to be addressed.

The original call for a women's justice board, similar to the Youth Justice Board, was made in a recommendation by the Prison Reform Trust, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, indicated. Dorothy Wedderburn's report of 2000 clearly set that out. It has been repeated variously, including by my noble friend Lord Acton—or should I say Lord Guildenstern.

Lord Rosencrantz.

My Lords, I thought that my noble friend preferred to be Guildenstern, but I am quite happy if he wants to rename himself Rosencrantz.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, Juliet Lyon and Her Majesty's Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, among many, have raised this issue. Concern was focused on the need to prioritise women offenders' needs with effective management and provision of adequate resources. We, too, recognise and share the concern that the distinct needs of women in the criminal justice system must be met, but there are no current plans to create a women's justice board.

I was asked to say why. There is currently no separate framework in law for women as there is for young offenders. We have a different structure. Attempting to go down that route could risk marginalising women further, when what is needed is to mainstream the provision that we give women and ensure that under the national offender management structure sufficient priority is given to service provision for, and management of, women offenders.

I shall touch on what unites women and men. There are two things we have to do if we are to change dramatically and significantly the way we deal with offenders. The first is to make an accurate risk assessment: what is the danger that they pose? The second is to do an accurate needs-based assessment. If we are going to stop the revolving door, we really have to better understand what we need to do with and for those offenders. If we do not assist them to break the cycle, those offenders will keep coming back. When we then look at the needs of women, we have to be clear that those needs differ from those of men.

As the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and I think the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, among others, said, the system was created and developed by men, for men. It does not necessarily respond in a way that meets the needs of women easily. As policy and programmes evolve, we have to take into account those sometimes quite stark differences.

I hope noble Lords will agree that the seven pathways out of crime we have identified are very similar for men and women. Whether it is work, education, housing or health, those issues impinge significantly and almost equally on men and women, save for one element: for men, employment is the big factor that cuts into whether they will return to offending, while for women it is accommodation, because they have to care for children and others. We are committed to making fast and significant progress in developing our strategy.

The strategic policy direction of the management of women offenders flows from the central National Offender Management Service through the framework of the women's offending reduction programme, whose intent is to ensure that policies and practices are appropriate to meet the needs of women, and to encourage joint working across departments and agencies to tackle the range of factors that impact on why women offend. The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, says that we have to work together; that this is not just a criminal justice issue. I absolutely agree with her. The issues of education and health are important.

I want us, however, to be accurate, and to acknowledge the marked changes that have been made by making the DfES responsible for education in the community and in prison. Making the Department of Health responsible for the health of women both in prison and outside is also a marked change, if we are to have end-to-end offender management and move smoothly from one to the other. We allocated £9.15 million of funding to the Together Women programme in March 2005. This is the first time that specific funding has been made available per gender, as opposed to any other criterion.

I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, that the whole process we are looking at is predicated on the approach adopted by the Asha Centre programme. That is what we are trying to replicate: a holistic response. I wish to see a development of that inclusive, multi-agency approach right across the country. The geographical line management of women prisoners, but with central oversight of operational policy development and implementation, has led to improvements in performance and gender-specific interventions. That has been very hard-won and difficult to achieve.

There is a policy group directly responsible for women's policy, headed up by Hazel Banks, which is aggressively looking at how we can make best use of this money. Within NOMS we are developing a national specification for women offenders in the community and in custody, which will ensure a central framework for the commissioning and delivery of appropriate provision for women. Gender-specific performance-monitoring arrangements will enable us to monitor and evaluate provision in a way that we could not do before. We are not complacent—more needs to be done. That is why I have asked my noble friend Lady Corston to undertake a review of vulnerable women to ensure that we are doing everything possible for women with particular vulnerabilities who come into contact with the criminal justice system. I look forward to receiving her report at the end of December 2006. I am determined that we should do better and leave no stone unturned in addressing the needs of women.

The women's offending reduction programme, launched in March 2004, aims to improve community interventions and services to ensure they are appropriate for women, and to reduce use of custody. It is a real step forward. The first annual review of progress was produced in September 2005. I hope that many noble Lords will have seen it.

I think that we are all agreed on the difficulties which we face. I turn to some of the specific issues that have been raised. I say to the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, that I do not have a snooze button. I wish that sleep would occasionally come my way to make a snooze button possible. I hope that I shall satisfy noble Lords that we have made many changes. All women's prisons now have some form of first-night support for women newly entering custody. However, we recognise that the level and type of services in prisons differ. The Prison Service is working hard to improve those services across the board.

Noble Lords have rightly asked what has happened to re-roling. One has to understand the role that Brockhill plays. The noble Baroness, Lady Stern, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, will be aware of that. Unsentenced women are most likely to be impacted by the change of function at Brockhill, as once women are sentenced they are all transferred out of Brockhill to other prisons to create spaces for newly remanded women. NOMS is finalising the revised court catchment areas arising from the Brockhill change of function. The analysis of the impact on the closeness of home will follow from that. I have insisted—I am assured that this has been done—that there has to be an assessment of each woman's needs before she is moved, that there has to be a discussion with each woman, and then that the most appropriate placement is found for her. That process will be rigorously adhered to so that we can ensure that the needs of each woman in the prison estate are dealt with appropriately.

Noble Lords know of the pressure on the prison estate. We have an oversupply of places in the women's estate and a tension in the male estate. That is the reality. Therefore, if we are to deliver parity of treatment and fairness to all our prisoners, it is incumbent on us to try to ensure that each prisoner has the best possible care that the system can devise. I do not hesitate to tell your Lordships that those issues are always difficult and complex, but that the needs of each person are looked at very fully indeed.

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, rightly raised concerns about the care that is given to pregnant women and the way in which we are dealing with that. The New Beginnings parenting courses, run by the Anna Freud Centre, are being piloted at three prisons and will be evaluated for their effectiveness in improving women's parenting skills. The pregnancy services should comply with the NHS guidelines. Therefore, a Prison Service order would not be appropriate, but I understand why the noble Earl raised the point, because at the time when it was suggested the NHS was not fully responsible for those services, and that would have been appropriate. Now we expect all women in prison to receive the same quality of care that they would receive from the NHS outside prison.

I know, too, that there has been concern about the difficulty in transferring men and women. I assure the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that there is separation between young people and men and women, and all appropriate steps are taken. On occasion, it is right because of the geographical positioning of the transfer that men and women are taken together, but children and young people are always taken separately, and appropriate steps are taken to make sure that is securely and properly done.

The right reverend Prelate rightly raised the issue of how others can contribute to the care that we give to those in prison. I commend, as he did, the work done by the Mothers' Union and by the chaplaincies of all faiths in prisons to drive that forward. The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, described the conditions in prisons as medieval and barbaric. That is an unjust assessment.

My Lords, I assure the noble Baroness that I was quoting Pauline Campbell; I was not saying it myself. That was her view after the death of her daughter.

My Lords, I understand the pain and difficulty that Pauline Campbell may be in, so I will rephrase that and say that it is not a just assessment of the conditions in prisons.

The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, rightly emphasised the issue of children and Every Child Matters, and I strongly agree with her. The work that we are doing in this area is not simply dependent on what we are doing in prisons; it is what we are doing on education, with Every Child Matters and Sure Start. All those things will contribute to an improvement of the way that we respond.

What we are doing to support women who are domestic violence victims is immensely important. The programmes of specialist domestic violence courts now have tremendous results, and there has been a clear improvement in the number of women who start cases and are able to go right the way through. There is an improvement in the number of women who are now able to get orders that keep them protected. In the areas where specialist domestic violence courts operate, we do not have people coming back. The numbers of women who are killed by their partners or ex-partners are going down. Before we started specialist domestic violence courts, 120 women died every year, which is two to three women a week. Now it has gone down to 100, and it looks as if it is going lower.

The number of incidents of domestic violence may also be reducing although, with the grace of God, the numbers who have the courage to report it are going up. These are very positive things. There is much work to do, and I will obviously listen and look very carefully at the report that my noble friend Lady Corston will be issuing in December. This issue is not closed. I know from those who sit behind me, not least my noble friend Lord Acton, that it will not be closed until he and a number of other noble Lords get their way.

My Lords, I am delighted that my noble friend should refer to me again and not call me either Guildenstern or Rosencrantz; it is a marvellous sensation. Is it within the terms of reference of my noble friend Lady Corston to recommend a women's justice board?

My Lords, we have not limited the nature of the recommendations that the noble Baroness can make. She has been tasked to look at the needs of vulnerable women who have very complex needs, to look at the system, and then to report. I have not restricted the areas on which she may feel it is pertinent to report.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for replying with her habitual courtesy and care and for covering so many issues raised this afternoon. I was particularly delighted with her last remark—that this issue is not closed. I also thank all noble Lords who have made such marvellous contributions to the debate, and for the depth of those contributions, which must have taken considerable time to prepare. I am certain that when people read this debate and see the evidence there, they will see that considerable knowledge already exists about the needs and the vulnerabilities of this neglected group of offenders.

I am very glad to hear that the issue is not closed. I am slightly bemused to hear that we cannot have a champion for women in the criminal justice system because there is not a separate framework for women in law. I believe that it is possible in any organisation to have a champion of people who has responsibility and accountability for looking after their affairs. Although I am delighted to hear that there is a policy group in NOMS, I know from experience that policy groups do not take action. Action is what we need to take.

I am glad that so many noble Lords have mentioned the staff in the Prison Service and the probation service and the problems that they face. I commend in particular the determined efforts of the current director general, Phil Wheatley, in leading his service in enormously difficult times, faced as he is with the imminent absolute lock-out of having all his places occupied.

I am sure that noble Lords will agree that we have had a vastly interesting and well informed debate. I hope that the Minister will take all of the contributions in the spirit in which they were meant. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.