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.