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?