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.