Women Offenders and Older Prisoners
(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I rise rather apologetically to my feet again, but taking the two reports together at least spares the Chamber a third speech from me this afternoon. I shall present the two reports in this speech. I do so with a heavy heart in one sense, because one or two Members who would have spoken in the debate are not able to do so, as they are at the funeral of our late colleague, Paul Goggins. He took such a close interest in criminal justice and had so much experience of it that I regularly tried to persuade him to join the Justice Committee, but he was already committed in a number of other ways, including as a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee. Our Committee missed out on having the benefit of his considerable wisdom, which we would have greatly appreciated.
This debate is on two reports that we produced this Session on groups of people who are minorities in the criminal justice system, but whose circumstances and needs place particular demands on that system, which is really geared towards dealing with young men. We wanted to examine the extent to which policy and practice are responding effectively to the needs of women offenders and older prisoners.
Older prisoners are the fastest growing group in the prison population, and our inquiry focused primarily, but not exclusively, on their treatment in prison. In our inquiry on women offenders, we looked at provision in the custodial state, where there are 3,845 women in a total prison population of 84,000, and more widely, including community provision for offenders and ex-offenders, and for women and girls at risk of offending. The Minister, whom we are glad to have here, will respond to the debate and cover both subjects. I shall return later to ministerial responsibility, particularly for women offenders, because that has been an issue.
All this goes back to 2006, when Baroness Corston was commissioned by the Home Office to examine what could be done to avoid women with particular vulnerabilities ending up in prison. That was prompted by the death of six women in Styal prison. Her report, published the following year, identified three categories of vulnerabilities for women: those relating to domestic circumstances and problems, such as domestic violence, child care issues and being a single parent; those relating to personal circumstances, such as mental illness, low self-esteem, eating disorders and substance misuse; and socio-economic factors such as poverty, isolation and employment.
The Corston report made 43 recommendations. I shall not go through all of them, but they included improvements to the way in which the issue was dealt with at Government level, the reservation of custodial sentences and remand for serious and violent women offenders, and the use of small local custodial centres within 10 years. They also included improvements to prison conditions, making community sentences the norm, and improvements in health services and support for women offenders. The then Government accepted 41 of the 43 recommendations.
There is much common ground on policy on women offenders. There appears to be fairly wide, although not universal, agreement that the majority of women offenders pose a limited risk, or no risk at all, to public safety, and that imprisonment is frequently an ineffective response. That is not about treating women more favourably or implying that they are less culpable, but about how to respond appropriately to the kinds of problems that women bring to the criminal justice system, and about what action is required to be effective in addressing their offending behaviour. In many cases, that is different from what is required to achieve the same thing in men.
It should be recognised that important progress has been made on the Corston recommendations. As has been illustrated by reports from the Howard League, the Prison Reform Trust, the prison and probation inspectorates and the all-party parliamentary group on women in the penal system, that includes better prison regimes, the ending of strip searching, reduction of self-harm, the establishment of a network of women’s centres, and acknowledging the need for differential treatment. However, levels of imprisonment for non-violent female offenders remain high, as do levels of self-harm by women. A study published before Christmas showed that there is still 10 times more self-harm among women prisoners than among their male counterparts.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I wonder on what basis the right hon. Gentleman claims that the majority of women offenders in prison are either not violent or not dangerous. Let me give a snapshot of the prison population. There are 3,477 women in prison, and murder, manslaughter, other violence against the person, sexual offences, robbery, burglary, arson, blackmail and kidnapping account for half the female prison population. Which of those categories is he saying is not a serious offence and involves people who are not dangerous to the public?
Sir Alan Beith
I chose my words carefully. I said not that women were put in prison for offences that were not serious—courts would normally regard either the offence or the fact that they are repeat offences as a serious matter, underlining their decision to give a custodial sentence—but that many of the women, if they were not in prison and were otherwise effectively supervised, would not constitute a danger to the public. That is not true of them all, which is why there will always be some women in prison, some for very long periods, but those numbers will be relatively small.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
In support of what the right hon. Gentleman says, in the 12 months to June 2012, 81% of women entering custody and starting a sentence had committed non-violent offences, compared with 71% of men.
Sir Alan Beith
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very good point and gives highly relevant figures.
In 2012, we decided to undertake an inquiry to review progress since the Corston report and to examine current strategy and practice. We held five oral evidence sessions. We visited prisons and women’s centres. We received more than 60 pieces of written evidence. We reported in July 2013, and the Government published their response in October. We visited HMP Styal, where the six deaths that prompted the Corston report had occurred, but in the inspection report on the prison published two years ago, Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons commented that it was
“disappointing to find, and to be told of by the governor, too many cases of women, some of whom were clearly mentally ill, serving very short prison sentences which served little purpose except to further disrupt sometimes already chaotic lives.”
During our visit, we saw a new unit that has been created in an effort better to meet the needs of these women, but questions were raised by our witnesses about why women with such complex needs continue to be sentenced to custody. However, those of us who visited Styal saw some genuinely good work going on there. Styal has featured so much in this history that I would not want the impression to be given that there is not some very good work indeed taking place there.
The fact that we were holding an inquiry at all seemed to stimulate the Government to take a number of positive steps to prioritise the requirements of female offenders. After we had announced the inquiry, the Government allocated ministerial responsibility for female offenders to the then Minister in the Department and former member of our Committee, the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant). They announced a review of the female custodial estate, published a statement of four high-level strategic priorities, and created an advisory board to oversee the work streams stemming from those priorities.
Our report was very wide ranging, and I cannot pick up all the threads, but let me start with the overall governance of these issues. We said in the report:
“It is regrettable that the Coalition Government appears not to have learnt from the experience of its predecessor that strong ministerial leadership across departmental boundaries is essential to continue to make progress, with the result that in its first two years there was a hiatus in efforts to make headway on implementing the important recommendations made by Baroness Corston”.
We in the Committee were particularly struck by Baroness Corston’s own evidence that under the previous Government it was not until a group of women Ministers worked together to take issues forward that that Government made significant progress in this area. We welcome the fact that the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald was appointed, but of course she has now moved to another ministerial position. I hope that this Minister will clarify, when he responds to the debate, just how overall leadership will be achieved in this area.
We say in our report:
“We welcome the production of a set of strategic priorities for women offenders but they need to be given substance”.
In the Government response, we were told that there would be further progress towards meeting the strategic objectives, and that there would be a report to Parliament on that in March this year, so we are getting quite close to that.
We say in our report:
“We do not consider that substantive changes to the…sentencing framework would be helpful…and recommend that emphasis is placed on ensuring a greater consistency of provision to the courts to enable them to sentence from a range of options specifically appropriate to women, including robust alternatives to custody.”
We say:
“We welcome the Sentencing Council’s inclusion of primary child caring responsibilities as a mitigating factor in sentencing guidelines”.
However, more than half the women sentenced to custody still receive short sentences. There appear to be several explanations for that: the absence of adequate and available community provision, the court perhaps not knowing whether there was adequate provision locally, or the court not being confident that the community provision was appropriate or acceptable to wider public opinion by being sufficiently robust. We were concerned that the agenda on that had not progressed sufficiently quickly.
We questioned women offenders and ex-offenders—they came before the Committee—who made it clear to us that they had preferred prison to community sentences. In at least one case, they had committed further offences because prison was easier than a community sentence that challenged them to change their life and also, of course, offered some support to enable them to do so.
Our report says:
“Women’s community projects are central to providing a distinct approach to the treatment of women offenders. They offer a challenging environment for women to serve their sentence as well as a broad range of practical and emotional support”.
Those projects, often delivered through women’s centres, offer a range of services and courses of the kind that Corston recommended: a punishment element; probation; community payback; addressing offending behaviour; anger management; domestic violence; drug awareness; supporting women who have offended, including in relation to housing and issues with children; parenting courses; social services; and a crèche.
A woman who attended Eden House in Bristol said to us in evidence:
“The sort of women coming here, if they went to prison they would only get a couple of weeks, or a six month sentence and serve half. That’s not enough time to make a difference. They just carry on as they did before. But with Eden House, you get structure, a variety of things to do, and the help and support of staff. These are all things you don’t get inside”.
We found evidence such as that very persuasive.
A lot of data have been collected by the National Offender Management Service in the past year about women who have been referred to women’s community services. Those data will be analysed, I think, this summer, and we look forward to seeing the results.
We say in our report:
“We are unconvinced about the extent to which the approach set out in the Government’s strategic priorities for women offenders is…integrated”
across Government and across Departments. We wanted the advisory board to
“map the confusing array of Government initiatives that”,
if brought together,
“have the potential to benefit vulnerable women and girls at risk of offending and specify how these should integrate with the strategy for women offenders.”
We drew attention to the fact that successful women’s centres were ensuring that some women on the periphery of the criminal justice system were being diverted away from crime, to the benefit of the community.
We note the inclusion in the Offender Rehabilitation Bill of the requirement for arrangements for supervision or rehabilitation to identify how they meet the needs of female offenders. The Government say in their response to us that they have produced guidance for new providers on gender-specific services, and that contractual arrangements are in place to ensure that those needs are met. We very much welcome that.
We made recommendations about the custodial estate. We are to conduct a more general inquiry into the prison estate, and we will look further at the provision for women offenders when we do that.
NOMS’ stocktake of women’s community provision was very positive in tone and concluded that
“services for female offenders for 2013-14 have been strengthened and that there will be greater access to gender specific services across the country.”
I am not sure that the picture painted by our witnesses was quite as positive as that. In any case, a stocktake looks at what is there, not at what is missing and still needed. A further analysis may be required to establish an evidence-based approach to the issue.
In general, the Government’s response to our report was thorough and constructive and set out clearly how our concerns could be addressed. The key question remains how real leadership will be provided—across Government, not just in the Ministry of Justice—to maintain momentum and put in place a range of services and interventions that can change the lives of women and girls who offend. Our constituents will benefit if, instead of paying the bills for the punishment of offences committed by women, we greatly reduce the number of those offences and offenders.
I want to talk about older prisoners, because this group is growing in the prison population and seems likely to continue to grow. It was no part of our report to argue that these are not people who should be in prison. It is very obvious, from what we know about the reasons for that growth, that for very many if not all of these people, there are very strong reasons to keep them in custody. I am referring to people with a record of violent offences.
However, older prisoners are and will continue to be a growing group. This population is added to, of course, by prosecutions in relation to historical sex offences. Older prisoners present a real challenge to the Prison Service. Some prisons are making substantial efforts to adapt their facilities to meet the needs of older prisoners, but of course for some prisons that is almost impossible because of the nature of their buildings. They may be multi-storey buildings. There may be a cell in which two beds cannot be put, but there are two prisoners, neither of whom can climb into an upper bunk. Physically, the facilities may not be suitable.
We thought that NOMS needed to ensure that all prisons have a policy that provides age-specific regimes. More prisons should establish day centres and regimes that provide for the needs of older prisoners, without necessarily segregating them entirely. We found problems with older prisoners’ access to health care services. We found, as in other areas of prison life, a large unmet need in relation to mental health and that there should be more consistent awareness training for prison officers about that.
We wanted prison and community health care IT systems to be better connected to minimise disruption. There was one really serious problem, which the Government have tried to address: the lack of provision for essential social care for older prisoners, and confusion about who should be providing it. We had a situation in which it was not clear whether a prisoner with acute social care needs was the responsibility of the authority from which they came, if that could be identified, or the authority in which the prison was located. The Government have dealt with that in clause 75 of the Care Bill, but we still need clarification on what happens to local authorities with a large prison population, because meeting that requirement will place considerable demands on their social work provision. Some places, such as the Isle of Wight, have gone some way to recognising that, but they will have total responsibility in this area under the new legislation.
We want good liaison with local authority social care teams. In the Isle of Wight, we saw that there had been good experiences as a result of placing social workers in prisons. That is not a luxury; serious problems can result from prisoners with serious personal care needs and limitations becoming excessively dependent on either prison officers—who have other responsibilities to carry out—or other prisoners. That is a dangerous situation in a prison.
We also looked at issues that arise when prisoners are terminally ill. We found that perhaps too little discretion had been given to experienced officers over when handcuffs might reasonably be removed from a terminally ill prisoner in a hospital bed, or when a governor, with the Minister’s approval, might grant release to a palliative care unit when no such facility existed in a prison.
We found problems with resettlement. Many long-term prisoners will be released at some point, and by the time they are released, they may have no contact with their home at all. The nature of their offence may have led to a complete break with their family. Where should they be placed if they are not to be at risk of committing further offences? We have asked the Government to do further work on a number of aspects of that problem. It was alarming to find that older prisoners were still being released to no fixed abode, which is neither acceptable nor in the interests of public safety and the community. The growth of the older prisoner population suggests to us that there ought to be a national strategy, but the Government did not accept that recommendation.
The Government response generally engages seriously with each of our recommendations, however. The Government agree that a formal analysis should be undertaken of prison accommodation to assess its suitability, and they have committed to doing that by the end of the year. They have committed to adapt prison regimes, and serious consideration is being given to improving health care. There is an acceptance of minimum social care needs and the care passport system. However, the response does not address the real concern about how local authorities will deal with large numbers of older prisoners for whom they acquire social work responsibility. The statement:
“It will be for each local authority to consider how best to meet need within a prison, and the role that social workers will play”
does not really tell us anything at all. In relation to the use of restraints, the response states:
“NOMS’ escorts policy is currently under review”.
The response on meeting accommodation needs on release does not promise a lot either. The outright rejection of the recommendation to introduce a national strategy on the grounds that it is “not possible to generalise” about the needs of older prisoners ignores the fact that there are common problem factors among most groups of older prisoners, as we saw when we visited several prisons. A strategy that worked its way through the prison system might be of considerable benefit, not only in managing prisoners more effectively but in making the prison system work more effectively. I commend our report to the House, and recommend that for both reports, hon. Members look carefully also at the Government response.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
With regard to the report on older prisoners, I understand that the Committee considered only prisons, not detention centres. I raise that because of a case in my constituency that the prisons inspector reported today involving a gentleman with dementia who was released within hours of his death, and who died with handcuffs on. Is there a prospect of the Committee wanting to look at detention centres, in view of the lessons learned from the previous study?
Sir Alan Beith
I had concluded my remarks, but I will pretend that I had not done so in order to answer the hon. Gentleman. Although the chief inspector of prisons quite rightly inspects detention centres—I am glad that he does—it is a Home Office responsibility, which means that the Home Affairs Committee ought to look at the matter. He is quite right to draw attention to some of the serious issues that the chief inspector has raised, which many hon. Members heard him speak about on the radio this morning. We see the chief inspector regularly about his prison work, which we very much respect.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
The first report to which the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) comprehensively referred surveyed the provision for female offenders within the system in England and Wales, with the particular aim of finding out what had happened since the landmark report by Baroness Corston in March 2007. By and large, the Justice Committee was disappointed to learn that the Government were still not investing enough resources in tackling the causes of female offending, as opposed to helping women already involved in the system. The Government have made progress in several areas, but the Committee warned that
“there is little to signal a radical shift in thinking”
about what generating a whole-system approach actually meant for tackling female offending.
As the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed has said, since the inquiry was announced the Government have appointed a ministerial champion for women in the criminal justice system, announced a review of the female custodial estate and published their priorities for women offenders. That is all to the good, except that we are now suffering a hiatus because the former member of our Committee who held that post of ministerial champion has moved on. I have no doubt that the current Minister will respond in due course to the points that the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed has made. I say in passing that the Minister must have been a very bad man in a past life, considering all the briefs that he has had to deal with this week. I am pleased to see him in his place.
There is a fear that progress may be undermined by the reforms—here we go again—to offender management and rehabilitation in the Offender Rehabilitation Bill, which is currently passing through Parliament. In the debate on Report on Tuesday evening, we had a short debate about Government amendment 7, which introduced the need to comply with the Equality Act 2010 and the need for the Secretary of State to identify anything in the arrangements that was intended to meet the particular needs of female offenders. As I said on Tuesday evening, I think that is all to the good. That triggered a response from the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) that stunned the Chamber into complete silence. He said, in effect, that he thought women were treated more leniently in the system than men.
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will make his own speech, and we will listen intently to what he has to say, but I have to tell him that there is little support for what he says. He seems to have missed an important point, namely, that sentencing a woman to custody has profound consequences that may not arise in cases involving men. There are questions about housing and care for children; there is the possibility of children being taken into care; and, overall, a huge wave of anguish surrounds such families. It should be noted that those additional and serious consequences will present even when a woman is given a very short sentence. As the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed has said, often that is the case, but the damage is still done.
I believe that we must treat women differently for those and other reasons. That was the basic ratonale for our research and report. We are seeking not necessarily the soft option but the appropriate option, which I for one would like to see implemented. I am sure that there are ways of doing it, and if we concentrate on the special problems that arise when women are sentenced to custody, I am sure that we will be able to improve the situation drastically.
I am not going to deal with the whole report, obviously, but I would like to highlight one or two issues arising from it. On trends in women’s offending and sentencing, the Committee agreed that women required a distinct approach from those who engaged with them in the criminal justice system. As I have said, we found that women tended to be the subject of shorter community orders and were less likely to be sentenced to custody than men. In 2011, 3% of females were sentenced to immediate custody, compared to 10% of males. That is partly to do with the types of offence commonly committed by women. Our report states:
“In the 12 months to June 2012, 81% of women entering custody under sentence had committed non-violent offences, compared with 71% of men.”
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I have here figures from the Ministry of Justice that were provided in a written answer to a parliamentary question I asked, so I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will accept them. Does he accept that for every single category of offence, a man is more likely than a women to be sent to prison? The figures on that point are laid out starkly by the Ministry of Justice.
Mr Llwyd
If the official figures show that, I am not in a position to argue with the hon. Gentleman, but does he accept that 81% of women entering custody under sentence have committed non-violent offences and are therefore not a danger to the community? Perhaps he will address that when he makes his speech.
Mr Llwyd
Okay. Our report goes on to state that
“over half (52%) of women sentenced had committed petty offences”—
relatively petty—
“related to theft and the handling of stolen goods, compared with one-third (33%) of men. In addition, over a quarter (26%) of women sentenced to imprisonment had no previous convictions, more than double the figure for men (12%).”
The Select Committee agreed that the majority of women offenders posed very little risk to public safety and that imprisonment was usually an ineffective response. After all, women have a very different experience of custody from men. Unfortunately, in their response to our report, the Government said:
“there should be one justice system for all offenders who commit crimes.”
The Government would do well to recognise that one size does not fit all when it comes to tackling offending.
Since 2008, the gender-specific standards in custody have provided gender-specific programmes, recognising the fact that female offenders’ needs are usually very different from male offenders’ needs. For example, female offenders are more than twice as likely as their male counterparts to suffer from anxiety and depression and are more likely to report having used class A drugs in the four weeks prior to custody. Female offenders are also more likely to have suffered abuse in childhood or in their adult lives.
Our inquiry found that the Government’s gender equality duty had not been implemented robustly enough and was not persuading enough commissioners to provide gender-specific services for women offenders. In their response to the report, the Government conceded that there were problems with the public sector equality duty.
The Government also refer to female offenders in their document, “Transforming Rehabilitation.” I was glad that they amended the Offender Rehabilitation Bill on Tuesday, but, as a member of the Justice Committee and a barrister of some years’ experience, I still have serious concerns about the potential effect of the proposals on provisions for female offenders, or the lack of them in future. I believe it is more likely than not that the private companies that win the contracts for supervising the under-12-month cohort will have little interest in investing time and resources in rehabilitative programmes, but we will wait and see, as no one has a definitive answer on that yet.
Sir Alan Beith
The right hon. Gentleman is making an important point. Does he agree that in some of the women’s centres we saw really innovative work by the voluntary sector? If companies and consortia want to succeed in reducing reoffending, they must make good use of the kind of skill and level of care that we saw working to such effect in Liverpool, Birmingham and Belfast.
Mr Llwyd
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. Quite honestly, the work in some of the centres was so good that it was astonishing. I well remember the visit to Liverpool—I have had some contact with the manager since then, as it happens—as well as the experience of Belfast and other places. What is vital, of course, is that whatever the structure for the immediate future, such centres are brought into the core of the delivery of services. They make it possible not to send young women away, to keep them with their family units and to turn them around in the most remarkable way. The problem we have—I probably speak for all members of the Select Committee on this—is that there are so few of them to rely on. Alas, at this stage, some centres are suffering from financial pressure. However, there is no doubt at all that if the new landscape is to work, those centres must be major players in providing such vital services, whether on their own or in concert with others. I agree entirely with what the right hon. Gentleman said.
The Committee drew attention to the perverse incentives that will be given to private companies not to provide appropriate services for women under the new reforms, since such services are not always presented as measures to reduce reoffending but rather as more holistic and costly care. In their response, the Government did not exactly contradict that point. However, they did claim that there would be
“advantages for providers of offering sustained support to all offenders within a cohort…including those with more complex needs.”
Once again, we will have to wait and see how that plays out in practice. I have doubts, but I hope that I am wrong.
One of the principal things that the Committee wanted to point out was that the transforming rehabilitation agenda has clearly been designed with male offenders in mind. Women offenders are possibly an afterthought. We said:
“Funding arrangements for provision for women appear to be being shoehorned into the payment by results programme”.
We also warned of the danger of
“sentencers using short prison sentences as a gateway to support”,
which would completely undermine
“the post-Corston direction of travel”.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the fact that the Committee took evidence that suggested that the system had been designed with only men in mind. However, I would draw his attention to the fact that, under the transforming rehabilitation proposals, the use of innovative small providers might bring innovation and be a good influence on dealing with women offenders. I am not sure that the whole Committee shared the right hon. Gentleman’s view, but I accept that it was expressed strongly in evidence.
Mr Llwyd
The hon. Gentleman is an assiduous member of the Justice Committee. He and I do not share views on this particular agenda, but I accept what he says. The problem we have, however, is that the small providers to which he referred are currently withering on the vine. I can think of very few in north Wales that would actually be able to deliver. In some areas I am sure that what he said is right, but after all is said and done, the Bill is meant to cover the whole of England and Wales. I take his point. Yes, there is a role—for sure—for small providers. The problem is that there are too few of them.
Nick de Bois
I will use this opportunity to stress a point that I have repeatedly made in the Select Committee, for the Minister’s benefit. One of the ingredients for success of the new proposals will be that procurement allows for innovation and small providers. Some of those small providers who are struggling now may benefit if they are engaged on contracts that help to deliver the responses that the right hon. Gentleman wants.
Mr Llwyd
The hon. Gentleman’s point is very timely. The Minister has heard it, and I accept that it is an important point.
The Government have not agreed with our analysis of the post-Corston direction of travel. However, they have assured us that after contracts have been awarded, account managers within the Ministry of Justice will monitor the provision for female offenders. Hopefully, from time to time there will be reports, both to the Committee and to the House, on how these reforms play out.
Speaking of short-term sentences, one of the principal recommendations of Baroness Corston’s original report was that, because short-term prison sentences were doing more harm than good for most female offenders, community sentences should be awarded where appropriate. The Committee found that some improvement was being seen, albeit slow, but more than half of women sentenced to custody still received short sentences, during which it is virtually impossible to do anything with them. I was glad to see from the Government’s response that they are addressing that issue under the enhanced community provision workstream of its advisory board. The Government expect to
“establish an early adopter region”
where they can pilot
“the outcomes of early intervention with female offenders”.
The Government also noted that they would be producing
“awareness raising materials for decision-makers in the criminal justice system on the…needs of female offenders.”
Again, that is welcome. It is timely that we should be having this debate the day after the Report stage of the Offender Rehabilitation Bill. The efficacy, or otherwise, of many of the recommendations that our report makes will hinge on how those proposals are put into practice.
The Committee’s second report is on older prisoners. One of our main concerns was the extent to which much of the prison estate and its regimes were unadapted to the needs of older prisoners. On the visit to Dartmoor, for example, we found that a considerable amount of the Dartmoor estate was totally inaccessible to wheelchair users because the doors were too narrow. We found that absolutely unacceptable. However, we understand that Dartmoor is a listed building and, to be honest, there is very little that can be done. Nevertheless, it greatly concerned me and other members of the Committee that that should be the case.
We noted that the National Offender Management Service’s responsibility to provide for the physical adaptation of prisons to suit older prisoners’ needs is not being met universally; I have already given the example of Dartmoor. Our report said:
“We recommend that NOMS should conduct a comprehensive analysis of prisons’ physical compliance with disability discrimination and age equality laws.”
We also recommended that
“NOMS should determine which prisons simply are not able…to hold older prisoners and it should then no longer hold older or disabled prisoners in these institutions.”
I was glad to see that the Government agreed that such an analysis needed to take place and that they have committed to conducting an assessment of the current accommodation needs across the prison estate and of its suitability for prisoners with specific needs, reporting by the end of this year.
In principle, the Government have also agreed to keep the time spent by prisoners in unsuitable accommodation to an absolute minimum, which is clearly welcome. The Committee recommended that older prisoners should be assessed before entering prison, to ensure that their needs were met. In their response, the Government said that
“social care needs assessments will be the responsibility of local authorities”
after the provisions of the Care Bill come into force in 2015. I am not particularly satisfied with the lukewarm assertion that
“NOMS will work with NHS England to consider ways in which prisoners’ initial health assessments could lead to a referral”
and that the Government will
“explore whether age could reasonably mean that such a referral is automatic”.
These prisoners cannot be allowed to fall between two stools, and it is surely the Government’s responsibility to ensure that they do not do so.
I would also like some clarification about what the situation will be for older prisoners in the prison estate in Wales, who will rely on NHS Wales, and for older prisoners from Wales who are incarcerated in England and who will consequently use the NHS in England.
One thing that has not emerged hitherto is that the largest increase in the prison population is in the over-55 cohort. For various reasons—historical sex abuse is a prominent one, but there are many others—that is the growth area in terms of prison numbers. Therefore, the treatment of older prisoners is an urgent issue, which should be addressed with due priority.
We wanted to stress that older prisoners should be able to use their time in prison as productively as younger prisoners, if they so wish, and that NOMS should put in place older prisoner policies in every prison, to provide for age-specific regimes for this cohort. The Government refused to concede that latter point, and I am afraid that I do not agree with their assertion that
“A requirement for every prison to have an older prisoner policy detailing age specific regimes would reduce the ability of prison governors to provide regimes which reflect the actual and specific needs of prisoners.”
I do not think that promising that
“NOMS will explore opportunities to adapt regimes in prisons where the needs of the population require it”
goes far enough to address this problem. Prisoners will fall through the cracks if a uniform policy is not adopted across the prisons estate.
I was glad that the Government accepted in principle the Committee’s recommendation that there should be enhanced training of staff in the mental health care needs of older prisoners. Once again, however, the Government have said that
“NOMS will look to work with NHS England developing training packages”,
and I would be grateful to know what discussions the Government will have with the Welsh Government to ensure that work is co-ordinated, so that no older prisoners miss out on this provision.
I shall make a few comments about how our recommendations about the resettlement of older prisoners were received. In our report, we praised the resettlement services in HMP Dartmoor and Isle of Wight, mainly because they provided comprehensive resettlement and care plans for older prisoners. We suggested that NOMS should roll out such services in all prisons where there is an existing population of older prisoners. The Government again said that, in light of the passing of the Care Bill, local authorities would have a responsibility to provide a care plan in those circumstances and that NOMS would work with local authorities to support that process. Again, I would like clarification about how that will work with regard to Welsh older prisoners, whether they are incarcerated in England or in Wales.
Finally, we said that it was imperative that older prisoners were registered with a community GP after release into the community to ensure continuity of care. It is vital that services are linked up in that fashion. In their response, the Government once again referred only to NHS England, and I seek further information about what discussions the Government will have with the Welsh Government to ensure that adequate information is given to GPs in Wales about older prisoners when they are released, whether—as I have already said—they are incarcerated in Wales or in England.
I am sure that the Minister will respond in his usual assiduous manner to the various questions that I have put today. However, I need to place on record my apology, as I will not be here for the wind-ups; I have a televisual appointment later on this evening. I am grateful to you, Mr Bone, for allowing me to make this speech at this stage.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. It is also a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd). He is a good man. I cannot think of anything that I agree with him about, although I am sure that we would find something if we struggled long enough, but he is a good man who argues his corner very effectively. I guess that this is a subject on which he has been particularly effective in arguing his corner.
My sole purpose here in Westminster Hall today is to try to give people the facts, which often appear to be lost in these debates. People can make of the facts what they will, but it is important that we have the facts because there is no excuse for people being misinformed. Rather than the report on older prisoners, which I will leave for another day, I shall concentrate on the report on women offenders. I have been studying this subject closely for quite some time, and it is important that the House knows the background.
I take a close interest in justice issues and sentencing. I spend a lot of time on them, visiting prisons, and so on. I used to attend Justice questions month in, month out, to be told time and again how terribly and unfairly women were treated in the criminal justice system and how so many of them who were in prison should not be there. From questions and speeches that I listened to, this problem seemed to be particular to women. So effective was this constant—week in, week out, month in, month out—lobbying in the House that I became rather agitated by it.
I believe passionately in equality, in the sense that people should be treated the same, across the piece. I believe that, whether determining people’s pay or opportunities, or in this case the way people are sentenced when they commit a crime, everybody, including the courts, should be gender-blind, colour-blind, religion-blind and sexual orientation-blind. People should be treated equally, irrespective of any of those things. I believe in that passionately.
When I was steamrollered with all the information in Justice questions and debates about how terribly women were treated in the criminal justice system and how unfairly they were treated by the courts, I was so irritated that I decided that something should be done. I decided that it was terribly unfair if women were treated so badly by the criminal justice system, so I looked into it in greater detail. The Minister will confirm that, as will all his predecessors. I praise the Minister, because I probably bombard him with parliamentary questions, seeking out lots of information and the statistics on all these things. I must put on the record that, to my mind, the Ministry of Justice is probably the best Department for providing relevant information. Far too many Departments will say that it is too difficult or expensive to find information. The Ministry of Justice never does that; in my experience, it always provides the information that is required.
There are reams of statistics and information out there, so there is no excuse for anybody to be misinformed, yet it appears to me that many of my colleagues in Parliament go no further than reading briefings from the Howard League for Penal Reform or perhaps, at a push, sometimes, from the Prison Reform Trust. Those organisations have their own, perfectly legitimate, reasons for producing figures and statistics in a particular way. They have an agenda: they do not like people being sent to prison; they particularly do not like women being sent to prison. I do not blame them for trying to influence policy along the lines that they feel are right when the door is left open to them. What is not acceptable is the misuse of figures in the House of Commons when we are debating serious information, so I want to try to redress that balance today. I have tried to do it in the past and I will continue to do it in future.
Today, I feel that I have been making some headway, because the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd seemed to concede—the first time I have heard it conceded—that, yes, men are more likely to be sent to prison than women. That tends not to have been heard before. Listening to questions and debates in Parliament, people would be forgiven for thinking that that was not so. I am pleased that that at least has been acknowledged. The right hon. Gentleman set out why he thinks there are good reasons to treat women differently in the criminal justice system and not to send them to prison as often as men. To me, that is a perfectly legitimate point for him to pursue. I do not necessarily agree with it, although I may agree with him on certain points. I am pleased that we are at least starting to have that kind of honesty in the debate, with people saying that, yes, men are treated more harshly by the courts when being sentenced, but there is a reason for that. I believe that I am making at least some progress in this debate. I hope to make further progress later today.
The fact is that, at any time in recent history, about 5% of the prison population has been female. In 1900, according to the Library, 17% of the prison population were women, but since the 1950s onwards, it has hovered around 5%. Therefore 95% of the prison population is male. That might surprise many, given the focus on female offenders. What might be a bigger shock to people, if they follow these debates as I do, is that, according to the Library, in the past 10 years the female prison population has decreased by 3%, whereas the male prison population has increased by 24% over the same period. People could be forgiven for not realising that when they see all the reports and all the focus on the number of women being sent to prison, when men being sent to prison is never covered in the same way. With all the reports, action plans, working groups, campaign groups, strategies and special interest groups, who would have guessed that those were the facts about the numbers of men and women in prison and the trend over the past 10 years?
The confusion arises because so many myths surround the debate about female offenders. I have mentioned some of these points before. The premise of the Justice Committee’s report seems to have missed the point about the reality of the situation. In fact, in recommendation 7, the Committee rather bizarrely states:
“We welcome NOMS’ intention to accelerate work on the specific needs of women, but we are extremely disappointed that over six years after the Corston Report there is still not sufficient evidence about what those needs are, or how best to address them.”
This whole debate and report seems to have been compiled on the basis that it is accepted that women offenders are a special case, that they have special needs and that something must be done to reduce the female prison population. This view is not based on any evidence that I have seen and this section of the report seems to suggest that no such evidence has been seen by the Committee, either.
Nick de Bois
I do not often take issue with my hon. Friend, which probably comes as no comfort to some Committee members, but he is concentrating on the numbers of people going to prison. Should we not be talking about whether measures that make it less likely for any offender—in our report, women offenders—to reoffend must be the greater prize than competing about numbers of people in prison?
Philip Davies
I will come on to that in a second, but the point is that surely that applies equally to male offenders, yet there is not the same focus on what matters to male prisoners and what will reduce male reoffending as there is on what would reduce female prisoners’ reoffending. That is bizarre, given that women make up only 5% of the prison population. If my hon. Friend is so concerned about reducing reoffending and reducing the crime rate per se, one would have thought, given the sheer weight of numbers, that he and his Committee, and the Minister and the ministerial team at the Ministry of Justice, would think it more important to get to grips with male offending and reoffending, but that is not what we hear.
Nick de Bois
My hon. Friend is, of course, well aware that we are concentrating on one specific issue that the Committee looked at. Of course, we have equally looked at the effectiveness of transforming rehabilitation and the great prize that we will win from that by bringing down reoffending. Is my hon. Friend really saying that, although he wants justice to be blind, it should also be stupid? If there are special points of difference, surely we should examine those, even if they are based on sex.
Philip Davies
I do not accept my hon. Friend’s premise that not sending women to prison—I will come on to why in a second—will make the kind of difference that he thinks it will. I want to examine the types of people who are in prison.
Sir Alan Beith
May I recommend for the hon. Gentleman’s bedtime reading a report that we published just before the general election—a long report, much longer than this one, called “Cutting crime”, which deals almost entirely with male prisoners?
Philip Davies
I suspect that I have already had it as bedtime reading, because I seem to have read almost every report going on these matters. We can have an argument on the effectiveness of prison per se at another time. I am a big fan of sending more criminals to prison: for example, each year some 3,000 burglars with 15 or more previous convictions are not sent to prison, which is a national scandal, and I suspect that most of my constituents think so too. We can discuss that on a different occasion, and perhaps the Select Committee might want to consider why so few persistent burglars are sent to prison. My constituents would welcome that.
One point that crops up time and again is the idea that women offenders are, by definition, more vulnerable than male offenders and therefore need special protection. I want to address that first because I believe that much has been made of the special case of women offenders, but next to nothing has been said about the problems that men face. I have been interested to discover that some of the facts show that much of what is being said could apply equally to men. The House of Commons Library, for example, says that almost the same proportion of sentenced male prisoners as of sentenced female prisoners ran away from home as a child—47% compared with 50%. The Library also states that, although a third of female prisoners were excluded from school, a larger half of male prisoners were excluded from school. A quarter of both male and female prisoners are thought to have been in care when they were growing up. Although about one third of female prisoners admit to hazardous drinking, it seems that the figure for men is more like two thirds.
When we talk about those figures, we have to bear in mind the overall prison population figures. For the record, as of last Friday, 10 January, there were 3,845 women in prison and 80,413 men. Clearly half of the male prison population is a very large figure and half of the female prison population is a relatively low figure, so if campaigners are really concerned about the personal circumstances and vulnerabilities of individuals, they perhaps ought to be clear that far more men than women are in the position they describe of being vulnerable prisoners. On sheer numbers alone, one would therefore think male prisoners would be given far more attention than women prisoners.
Of course, the favourite subject among some campaigners is mental health, which is also mentioned prominently in recommendations 1 and 2 of the Select Committee report, and it is addressed in the Government response. Of course the figures in the report are only for women offenders, so in the interest of ensuring that we have the real picture, and not the one that some would like us to be left with, I will compare female offenders with such problems with male offenders in the same position.
In 2011, two women committed suicide in prison. I do not know the circumstances of those cases, but one might conclude that they were clearly vulnerable individuals. In the same period, 55 men took their own life. That is a stark example of the most serious end of the argument and it shows why it is unbelievable that so much time is spent compiling reports about vulnerable women, yet so little time is spent considering the hard facts about the deaths of male prisoners.
Even more recent figures show an alarming trend of which I hear little mention. Although the number of female self-harmers decreased from 1,429 in 2005 to 1,065 in 2013, the number of male self-harmers increased in that period from 5,692 to 6,823. Perhaps more starkly, over the same period the number of female self-harm incidents decreased by half, from 12,014 to 6,236, while the number of male self-harm incidents increased from 10,109 to 16,741. Again, according to the Ministry of Justice, 145 female offenders who self-harmed in 2013 required hospital treatment, whereas 10 times as many male offenders who self-harmed had to be taken to hospital. If people are concerned—and it may well be a legitimate concern—that women are vulnerable in those circumstances, surely men in such situations must be of equal concern. If that is the case, why do we have Select Committee reports simply on female offenders? Why do we not have the same reports on male prisoners, which we never seem to get?
Mr Llwyd
The hon. Gentleman is an intelligent man, but his last point is rather stupid. In our report we were considering the circumstances of female offenders. As the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) told him, there have been other reports on the male occupants of the prison estate. Saying that because we are considering the situation of women, we could not care less about men, is absolutely ridiculous.
Philip Davies
I am afraid we hear that time and again in the main Chamber. Questions focus on female offenders, female offenders, female offenders; there is never the same focus on either offenders overall or male offenders. All I am trying to do is introduce some balance to the debate. Actually, all of the things that people mention also apply to male offenders and, just because of the sheer numbers, in many more cases. I would like to see the same focus—arguably, a greater focus—on all of those issues in relation to male offenders.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend find it as surprising as I do that, whereas the female figure for self-harm incidents has been going down not just in total over an eight-year period but in every single one of those eight years, the male figure has been going up every single year? We might think that it is flying in the face of the facts to concentrate on females rather than males.
Philip Davies
One would have thought that, if the Select Committee was just considering the evidence, it would have wanted to focus on why the problem appears to be getting worse for male prisoners when it is getting better for female prisoners. Perhaps that would be a worthwhile thing to consider, but it appears that the Select Committee has glossed over that fact in its obsession with appealing to the politically correct lobby that wants to make out that women are treated far worse in prison than men.
One of the myths that I want to address is the idea that women are very likely to be sent to prison. The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd gives the impression that many women should not be in prison, for reasons that apply only to women. He says there is a unique problem for women, and I want to nail that myth once and for all—I suspect that I will not, but I will give it my best shot.
Going back to my starting point, which is that I was appalled by what I was hearing about how women are treated so badly by the courts, I asked the House of Commons Library to provide the evidence that a higher proportion of women are being sent to prison. Not only could the Library not provide that evidence, but it confirmed that the exact opposite is true. I repeat that, for every single category of offence, a man up before the courts is more likely than a woman to be sent to prison. For violence against the person, for example, 35% of men and 16% of women are sent to prison; for burglary, 45% of men and just 26% of women are sent to prison; for robbery, 61% of men are sent to prison and 37% of women. It applies in every single category of offence: men are more likely than women to be sent to prison.
A Ministry of Justice publication called “Statistics on Women and the Criminal Justice System,” which is produced to ensure that there is no sex discrimination in the system, states:
“Of sentenced first-time offenders…a greater percentage of males were sentenced to immediate custody than females (29% compared with 17%), which has been the case in each year since 2005.”
Nick de Bois
In all my hon. Friend’s bedtime reading of the report’s 150-odd pages, did he see that on page 7 the Committee does state that women are less likely than men to be sentenced to custody? It is there in black and white, so I am not sure what we are arguing over.
Philip Davies
It is there, but it is hidden away; it is never mentioned by any member of the Select Committee in their speeches. They would like to give the exact opposite impression. They know exactly what they are doing.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
I tried to stop myself intervening, but I am afraid that I cannot sit any longer. Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that the question of whether someone is sentenced to prison is a matter for the judge of the sentencing court? The defendant’s personal circumstances will be considered and mitigation will be put forward. The reality is that women’s circumstances are often different from men’s. It is wrong for him to suggest that the figures in the report are in any way hidden; they are clear. If memory serves—I read the report late last night—it states that 10% of male offenders and 3% of first-time women offenders are sentenced to custody. The figures are not hidden.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Later, I will discuss whether it is justified for special circumstances to apply when deciding whether to send women to prison.
Mr Llwyd
For clarification, I said in my speech that women are less likely to be sentenced to custody than men. In 2011, 3% of females were sentenced to custody, compared with 10% of males. I know that the hon. Gentleman is obsessed with his own argument and does not want to listen to the other side of the argument, but that was said, and it is on the record.
Philip Davies
If the right hon. Gentleman is listening to my speech, he will have heard me say at the start that I thought I was making some headway because this debate is the first time that I had heard him acknowledge that fact. It is not that I am not listening to him; it is a question of him not listening to me.
[Mr David Amess in the Chair]
I am grateful, however, because we are starting to make some progress. Everyone appears to be falling over themselves to say that men are more likely to be sent to prison than women. When I made that comment the other day and in previous debates, I have been told that that clearly is not true. Now, everyone is falling over themselves to say that what I am saying is right, and that they were there first. I do not want to be precious about this, and do not want it to seem that I was there first; if people want to claim the credit, I am happy for them to do so. I am just pleased that we are making some headway, and that the facts are for once beginning to rear their ugly heads.
The Ministry of Justice answered a question that I asked in September about pre-sentence reports and its recommendations for sentences in court. It was confirmed that probation staff are twice as likely to recommend custody for male offenders due to be sentenced in Crown court cases than for female offenders. For men, the figure is 24%, while it is just 11% for women. Even repeat offenders are more likely to fare better if they are women. For those who have committed more than 15 offences, pre-sentence reports recommend custody for 39% of men, compared with 29% of women. All that shows that it is wrong to say that women are more likely to be sent to prison than men. We seem to have agreed among ourselves that men are more likely than women to be sent to prison for committing exactly the same offence. That is the reality.
It is also true, however, that men will be sent to prison for longer than women. I refer again to the Ministry of Justice’s published figures, which state that women given an immediate custodial sentence for indictable offences receive shorter average sentence lengths than men. It is 11.6 months for women, compared with 17.7 months for men. That is not a minor difference. That figure shows that the average male prison sentence is over 50% longer than the average female sentence. That is something that those who allege that they are keen on equality may want to think about.
Not only are women less likely to be sent to prison and more likely to be given a shorter sentence, but they are more likely to serve less of the sentence in prison than men. The Ministry of Justice helpfully points that out in its offender management statistics:
“Those discharged from determinate sentences…had served 53 per cent of their sentence in custody… On average, males served a greater proportion of their sentence in custody—53 per cent compared to 48 per cent for females”
in the same period. It continues:
“This gender difference is consistent over time, and partly reflects the higher proportion of females who are released on Home Detention Curfew.”
Other published Ministry of Justice figures confirm that. In fact, there is quite a disparity. In the past few years for which figures have been published, women have had 50% more of a chance than men of being released from prison early on home detention curfew. I hope that we have finally nailed the idea that women are treated more harshly by the courts than men. Men are clearly treated more severely by the courts when it comes to being sent to prison.
The other myth that we hear—the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd hinted at it earlier—is that most women in prison are serving short sentences for petty, non-violent offences, and that they would be better off being dealt with elsewhere. Let us take a snapshot of the sentenced female prison population at a moment in time and look at the detail of all these “poor women” who are serving prison sentences and who should—apparently—be out and about in the local community. Which women prisoners do those who advocate reducing the female prison sentence want to let out? I asked that question of the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), who has been good enough to come back again today, for which I am grateful. The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd gave the impression—although he perhaps would not want to subscribe to this—that as much as 80% of women prisoners should not be in prison. That was the impression that he wanted to leave us with when he made his comments.
I have the latest Ministry of Justice figures on the female prison population, and I want to know which of these people the right hon. Gentleman and others think should not be in prison. Is it the 231 who are in there for murder? Is it the 61 who are in there for manslaughter? Perhaps it is the 73 who are in there for other and attempted homicides. Is it the 391 who are in for wounding? Is it the 52 in for assault? Perhaps it is the 56 who are in prison for cruelty to children, or the 85 who are in for other violence against the person. Maybe the 83 who are in there for sexual offences should not be in prison. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman has in mind the 328 who are in prison for robbery. Is it the 208 who were unlucky enough to be sent to prison for burglary? They must have been persistent burglars to have been sent to prison.
The right hon. Gentleman probably does have in mind the 508 women who are in prison for theft and handling stolen goods, but maybe it is the 574 who are in for drug offences; perhaps they are the ones who he thinks should not have been sent to prison. Maybe it is the 86 women who are in prison for arson, the 24 for criminal damage, the 12 for blackmail or the 37 for kidnapping. Maybe the right hon. Gentleman has those people in mind when he says that these women, who apparently pose no danger to the public, should not be in prison. When those numbers are added up, they make up far more than half of the female prison population. Let us hear which ones should not be in prison. I would like to know.
Sir Alan Beith
I have a suggestion for the hon. Gentleman. I would like him to take a trip to Texas to meet some right-wing Republicans who have decided that there is no point in spending so much money on putting so many women in prison on short-term sentences for drug offences when they could be got off drugs and restored to a decent life through methods in the community. It is right-wing Republicans who are saying that.
Philip Davies
I am delighted that the Chair of the Justice Committee is leading with his chin on this issue. He fails to acknowledge that the prison population in Texas is far higher, so it is starting from a much higher base. I would be delighted if we could agree that the prison population in the UK should be the same as Texas’s. If he is suggesting that we should emulate Texas in our criminal justice and sentencing system, consensus will have broken out in this Chamber. If that is the direction of travel that he thinks we should go in—Texas—I am all for it, and more power to his elbow.
At least the Chair of the Justice Committee had a bash at answering my question, for which I give him credit. He seemed to indicate that it was the 574 women in prison for drug offences who should not be in prison. That number includes 166 for supplying drugs, 113 for possession with intent to supply, and 140 who were importing or exporting drugs. They are the ones who he believes should not be in prison. I give him credit for putting his head above the parapet, but no one else who says that all these women should not be in prison is prepared to identify which should not be there. The reality is that these women are not in prison for minor offences, and it is an absolute disgrace that people try to suggest otherwise.
I want to emphasise how serious the offences are for which some female offenders are in prison. The argument is made that all these women are in prison for short sentences and perhaps should be serving community sentences instead. That is an absolute myth. According to the prison population figures, just under 16% of women in prison have sentences of less than six months. That is clearly quite a minority. If some do not class six months as a short sentence, I will be charitable and go up to a year; a further 6% of women are in prison for between six months and a year, so 22% of female prisoners are sentenced to less than a year in prison. Some 78% of female prisoners are sentenced to more than a year, and who can say that they are not serious offenders, when we already know that they are given shorter sentences than men? These are clearly serious or persistent offenders, and I hope that we can start nailing that particular myth too.
Sentences of more than a year mean that the magistrates court felt that the offenders’ crimes were so serious that they were not capable of sentencing them. They had to send the cases to the Crown court, otherwise the offenders could not have got those sentences. Let us end the myth that all those women in prison are in for short sentences and for not very serious offences.
Karl Turner
Will the hon. Gentleman at least accept that the needs of women in prison differ from those of men? He will be aware of the tragic case that was raised recently by the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman), with the Justice Secretary. A woman prisoner miscarried in a prison cell and was apparently told by prison officers to clean up the cell afterwards. Does the hon. Gentleman want to comment on that?
Philip Davies
I appreciate that the shadow Minister has probably got a wasp in his trousers and is itching to get on with things, but if he bears with me, in a second I will come on to say why I do not necessarily accept his premise that women should be treated differently from men. As it happens—I have made this clear already—if people want to make the point that women should be treated more favourably by the courts than men, that is perfectly legitimate. I do not have a problem with that, so long as we are having an honest argument about what the facts and figures are.
If people are saying that the 2,789 women who are sentenced to prison each year for theft and handling should not be sent to prison—I suspect, given that they have been sent to prison, that they must be serious and persistent offenders—I presume that they think, though they never say so, that the 16,501 men who are sent to prison for that offence each year should not go to prison either. Perhaps that is what people secretly think, but they do not want to be seen to say, “We want to cut the prison population by the thick end of 20,000 each year.” No one ever seems to say that.
I want to move on to another myth, which I hope will deal with the point the shadow Minister raised. The myth is about how prison separates mothers from their children, which unduly punishes them. That goes to the point made by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd on why he believes it is right that men are more likely to be sent to prison than women. I want to instil some seldom-offered facts into this side of the debate. It is said that 17,000 children are separated from their mothers, and that 60,000 women in custody have children under the age of 18. Those are the figures, as far as I am aware, and I am not sure that anyone would dispute them. As I have said before in a Westminster Hall debate, a senior Ministry of Justice civil servant helpfully confirmed that two thirds of the mothers sent to prison
“didn’t have their kids living with them when they went into prison.”
People use the figures to say, “X per cent. of mothers are sent to prison.” Well, yes, they are mothers—no one can deny that—but in two thirds of cases, they are not looking after their children when they are sent to prison. Why should they become a special case at that point, when the children have already been taken away from them because the mother is presumably considered not fit to look after them? Why do we still consider them to be a special case, simply because they are mothers?
When it comes to the minority of mothers sent to prison who are still looking after their children, it is wrong to assume that they are all fantastic mothers. Many will be persistent offenders with incredibly chaotic lifestyles. Some, no doubt, will end up dragging their children into their criminal lifestyles, and some will scar their children for life along the way. Others will have committed serious offences. Sarah Salmon from Action for Prisoners Families said:
“For some families the mother going into prison is a relief because she has been causing merry hell.”
To most people, that would be a statement of the obvious. Why should those women be treated as a special case, when they are clearly not providing a great role model to their children or having a great influence on their upbringing? If anything, they are having a negative influence on their upbringing. Let us not forget those mothers who are in prison for abusing their children and being cruel to them. I am not entirely sure that anyone would think they should be a special case either.
If we are so concerned about the children of women offenders, what about the estimated 180,000 children who are separated from their fathers, because their father is in prison? In the age of equality, should we not be at least equally outraged about that? If we are not, why not? I thought there was a growing acceptance that a father was just as important to a child’s upbringing as a mother. Why are we treating mothers as a special case in all these cases? I do not see any justification for that when we know for a fact, thanks to the Ministry of Justice and the figures it produces, that two thirds of mothers are not even looking after their children when they are sent to prison. I hope we can nail the myth that that is a reason for treating women differently when they are sentenced in the courts.
Another myth is that women are generally treated more harshly in the justice system than men. Yes, we have now accepted that men are more likely to be sent to prison, but if we go underneath the prison regime, the myth is that women are treated more harshly by the courts before being sent to prison, but that, again, is not true. Even when they are not sent to prison, men are more likely to receive a community order than women. You would think it was the other way round, Mr Amess. So few women are sent to prison, one would think that most of them would get a community order, but no. We do not have any of that. Some 10% of women sentenced are given a community order, compared with 16% of men. The Ministry of Justice confirmed that the
“patterns were broadly consistent in each of the last five years.”
That is not all. The Ministry also points out that the average length of a community sentence is longer for men than it is for women. It said:
“For women receiving a community order, the largest proportion had one requirement (46%), whereas the largest proportion of men had two requirements (41%).”
So the pattern is complete: men are more likely to be sent to prison than women, they are more likely to be sent to prison for longer than women for the same offences, and they are more likely to serve more of their sentence in prison than women. Men are more likely than women to get a community sentence, and to have a community sentence that lasts for longer, and they are likely to have more requirements added to it. It is a full house; that is the picture of how men and women are treated in the courts and the criminal justice system.
I return to where I sort of began. Many of those who take part in these debates are the self-confessed equality issues addicts. They want equality in this, that and the other. It is a perfectly laudable aim; I believe in equality, too. People should be treated the same, irrespective of their gender, race, religion or sexual orientation, so why should that not be the case when it comes to sentencing people for committing the same crime? We are dealing with the “equality when it suits” agenda. The argument is that women and men should be treated the same, unless we can get better treatment for women, which we are all in favour of. That is not equality. It is very selective, and in my view sexist. Courts should sentence people on the basis of the crime, not whether they are a man or a woman.
The Select Committee would do well to consider the prison population as a whole and why the male prison population is so large. If it wants to strike a blow for the rights of women, it should argue for men and women to be treated the same by the courts, and that it is the crime committed, not gender, that should count. If we were considering the same phenomenon in relation to race, religion or sexual orientation, it would be considered an outrage. I consider it an outrage that women are treated so much more favourably in the criminal justice system than men. People may think it a good thing for them to be treated differently—some clearly do—but at least let us be honest about the facts and acknowledge them. I am pleased that some right hon. and hon. Members have begun to do that today, so we can draw our own conclusions. If we do nothing else today but set out the inconvenient—to many—facts, the debate will have been useful after all.
Mr David Amess (in the Chair)
Order. I am minded to start the winding-up speeches at 4 o’clock, which will leave half an hour for the two Front-Bench spokesmen and the Chairman of the Select Committee to make some closing remarks. I think there are three or four hon. Members who want to catch my eye, so perhaps they can share the 40 minutes between themselves.
Sir Alan Beith
On a point of order, Mr Amess. I offer to surrender the opportunity to make closing remarks, to give the Minister a little more time to answer the full range of issues raised in the debate.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I will be relatively brief, Mr Amess. I want to ask a few questions about the Government’s response to the report, but first, as I raised the issue of detention centres earlier, I hope that the Minister will pass on to his Home Office colleagues the importance of addressing the report today from the chief inspector of prisons. I raised the Harmondsworth detention centre incidents in the debate on the Immigration Bill on 22 October, and referred to the visitors’ report published last year. I continue to be concerned; we need to deal with the concerns regularly expressed by the visitors. There was also a separate report on mental health in particular, published just before Christmas by Detention Action.
I have some questions about progress in relation to the Government’s response to the Select Committee report. The Secretary of State said:
“I have considered the Committee’s recommendation to develop a strategy for older prisoners. I accept the suggestion that a national, consistently applied approach is needed across prisons and prison staff.”
I am not completely sure what the difference is between a strategy and a consistently applied approach, but the Government’s response to the issues raised by the Select Committee seems to include action on a number of fronts, which is helpful.
As to the categorisation of older prisoners, the Government responded:
“We will not look to categorise prisoners as old by their age, but we will look at the possibility of automatic consideration of possible age related issues…We will undertake analysis of offender needs by age to help understand at which age it would be best to do this.”
It would be useful to have a time scale on that, and a progress report in due course. Perhaps the Minister can advise us what is happening.
The Government promised a review of the suitability of the prison estate. They agreed that
“a formal analysis of the estate is required”
and said they would
“develop a process for conducting an assessment of current accommodation”
to be completed by “the end of 2014”. I know it is early, but some form of publication of the way that is being undertaken, and in what stages—whether it is being done geographically, region by region, or category by category—would be helpful, particularly in the light of the reorganisation of the Prison Service under the Government’s new proposals.
The Government said:
“As far as possible, NOMS will ensure that older prisoners are not allocated to an establishment that cannot meet their needs. We are grateful to the committee for their recognition that this will be subject occasionally to operational difficulties”.
It will be useful to see how the Government will monitor the occasions when operational difficulties have an impact on the appropriate allocation of a prisoner to a specific site or prison.
On another matter of progress, the Government responded to what the report said about the health and social care of older prisoners, saying:
“We agree that better management of health appointments is desirable. To support this, NOMS will work with NHS England on the possibility and suitability of increasing the use of video link technology.”
It would be useful have information—not necessarily today, but perhaps in writing—about the programme and the time scale for implementation. Some idea of cost would be useful as well.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on what he is saying; I know how passionately he feels about the issue. As to social care, a similar point was made to me by Professor John Williams of Aberystwyth university. He said that one of the biggest obstacles for social care services for older people was the ordinary residence rule. What is the ordinary residence of a prisoner? Is it where they come from, the location of the prison, or where they will go after release? Local authorities can play that card to avoid responsibility. That needs to be clarified.
John McDonnell
I fully agree. I was going to come on to that point, but the hon. Gentleman has covered it for me. Local authority funding is a key issue, particularly for those with prisons nearby.
The Government responded to a proposal about the incorporation of awareness training with regard to the elderly. They said:
“NOMS will look to work with NHS England developing training packages.”
I should in due course welcome the Minister’s detailed response about how that is being approached, including the progress being made, the cost, and the consultation that is being undertaken, particularly with the Prison Officers Association and the POA’s involvement in designing and promulgating the package.
I am extremely concerned that we secure a clear financial base for local authorities in the new role that they will play in social care. As the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) said, we need clarity about who is responsible, and what the cost burden in the locality will be. The Government said that they were “currently refining” the estimates
“through a survey of prisoners.”
That obviously relates to scale of costs. They also said:
“Funding provision that recognises the additional costs will be provided to Local Authorities.”
It would be extremely helpful to know what progress had been made in the negotiations with local authorities, and the estimates that had been bandied about—I know those are a matter for negotiation, as that is something I did in another life. It would be useful to know how the consultation is being undertaken, whether agreement is reached in due course about the scale of the costs and how they will be administered. That will come down to a detailed formula at some stage, but it would be helpful to have early information and some understanding of how any difficulties will be resolved.
The Committee raised the question of the age trigger, and the Government said that they would re-examine it. They said that
“an assessment of the costs and benefits of an age trigger for health and social care assessments would be needed before any commitment to an automatic age trigger for either health or social care assessment”
would be entered into. It would be useful to know how that assessment was being undertaken and, again, the time scale for and manner of its report to the Committee or the House.
The Select Committee raised the issue of restraint, in relation to escorts in particular; some members have found restraint a difficult matter. The Government responded:
“NOMS’ escorts policy is currently under review and this issue will be explored further as part of that.”
It would be useful, again, to know the time scale for that and how it will be reported. Will there be opportunities to examine the policy in more detail as the Government develop it?
As to resettlement, there is guidance to be published with the new Bill, with respect to NOMS working
“with their partners in local authorities to see how prisons can support this.”
It would be useful to know from the Minister whether that guidance is in draft form already, when it will be published and how it will be agreed in due course. The relationship with local authorities will clearly be a key matter.
The Government response also stated that
“NOMS will explore the possibility of making some small-scale improvements to Approved Premises.”
It will be useful to have some details of the assessment undertaken and of the time scales for implementation.
Finally, the Government response also dealt with the transit of prisoners between areas and how that would be clarified:
“This work should be completed alongside the launch of the Care Bill in 2015.”
It will be useful to have some detail about how that is being examined—who has been involved in the consultations and discussions, and again whether some of the issues have been dealt with or are being overcome in those discussions.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Amess, and to follow the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who has posed a number of questions to the Minister. I have no questions to pose, but I want to support the comments made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and to speak out on behalf of what might be called the man in the street’s approach to sentencing and crime.
In essence, I want to see men and women treated equally by our justice system. I see no reason why a woman, purely for being a woman, should receive a more lenient sentence or any more favourable treatment than a man. Despite everything that has been said, my hon. Friend has done the whole House a favour—as he has tried to do on previous occasions, to be fair—by establishing the actual facts. Too often the facts get lost amid all the rhetoric. We need to see the right sentence to reflect the nature of the crime.
Looking at this from the point of view of the victim of the crime, if my home has been burgled, it makes no difference to me whether it was burgled by a man or a woman. The home owner will expect the sentence to be the same for whomever it was who burgled the house, whether man or woman, because the effect on the victim of the crime is the same. We seem to be moving away from the idea in the old adage that the punishment must fit the crime, to a modern 21st-century idea that the punishment must fit the offender.
Sir Alan Beith
I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the many victims who have come before the Justice Committee as witnesses. They have said that the thing uppermost in their mind was that no one else should have to suffer the offence that they had suffered. The most appropriate decision, therefore, is whichever sentence is least likely to lead to reoffending.
Mr Nuttall
I am sure that that is absolutely right: the first thought of any victims of crime would be that they do not want anyone else to suffer in the same way. That brings me to my next point.
Philip Davies
If we all agree with that point, presumably the best way to ensure that someone is not a victim of crime is to ensure that offenders are in prison, because while they are in prison they cannot go out and commit another crime.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend leads me nicely on to the point I want to make about a concept that is rarely heard of—we have hardly touched on it in the debate—which is punishment. We have hardly heard anything about punishment. Sentencing is also about imprisoning people as punishment for the crime that they chose to commit—whether a man or a woman, they chose to commit the crime. That goes to the heart of the matter.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I apologise that I was not here for the start of the debate. I was speaking in the debate on Bangladesh in the main Chamber. As a member of the Justice Committee, however, I have taken part in all the inquiries, and I invite the hon. Gentleman to consider for one moment that societies that obsess solely about punishment end up with large prison populations and a very high rate of reoffending. Countries that go in for a combination approach, including a rehabilitation process, often end up with smaller prison populations, less reoffending and less crime.
Jeremy Corbyn
On a point of order, Mr Amess, the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) just described what I said as garbage. Whether that is parliamentary or not, I am not particularly bothered, but if he wants to make an intervention to challenge my assertion, why does he not do so, rather than make such remarks?
Mr David Amess (in the Chair)
I have listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said. It is not in order to use the word “garbage”. Someone may wish to make a further intervention, but for now I call Mr David Nuttall.
Mr Nuttall
I entirely accept the reason of the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) for not being present earlier in the debate. That matters not; it was appropriate for him to be speaking in the other debate in the main Chamber. I also accept that, as a member of the Committee, he has spent some time looking into the subject, but I was not suggesting that rehabilitation should play no part in the justice process. Clearly, rehabilitation will have a part to play in most cases, although some cases are so heinous that offenders will not let be out of prison. If I had my way, of course, we would see the introduction of capital punishment—that would go some way towards dealing with the number of older prisoners in our prison estate.
Mr Nuttall
And with reoffending, for that matter.
I am conscious of your guidance on time, Mr Amess, so I will not digress too much, but does it really matter whether someone is young or old, or male or female? A victim of crime who has suffered wants to see someone punished for that crime. The facts show, however, that male offenders are more likely to be sentenced to immediate custody than a female offender. Taking robbery, for example, 61.7% of male offenders but only 37% of female offenders are sentenced to immediate custody. Furthermore, when they are sentenced, the average sentence length for men is much more—34.1 months on average, compared with 25.5 months for female offenders. That is the same across the board, whichever sector we look at, for all offenders: thus, for burglary, 44.9% of men receive immediate custodial sentences, but only 26.6% of women.
Whichever category we look at, therefore, we see the same result—that cannot be right and it cannot be excused. We should not be looking for all sorts of socio-economic reasons to explain why people have committed crime. The introduction to the report on women offenders mentioned categories that should be taken into account, including a variety of “personal circumstances” and
“socio-economic factors such as poverty”.
I grew up in straitened circumstances and I find it extremely insulting when people suggest that people living in poor circumstances should somehow be excused for committing crime. That is simply not right. I was brought up in difficult circumstances, but we were all taught the difference between right and wrong; that it is wrong to commit crime, to steal from a neighbour or to hit someone else. We need to get back to a society in which, from an early age, people are taught the difference between right and wrong and that offenders are punished, and punished severely, so that they do not want to commit more crime or go back to prison. That is how we will cut crime in this country.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
I apologise, Mr Amess, but I have to leave before the end of the debate, because I have to meet a distinguished visitor who is coming to address the Defence Committee. I shall be as brief as possible.
I have listened to one of the speeches in today’s debate more than once this week, and I have to say that I have not found myself agreeing with one iota of it on either occasion. I find it most worrying when people say that equality means sameness. Equality is not about things being the same. If it was, we would expect someone with a disability to be able to do the same as somebody who does not have a disability, and, if we asked them to do the same things, we would say that was because we were treating them equally, but we would not be treating them equally; we would be treating one of them unfairly. Equality is not about sameness.
I want to discuss why we use prison and the impact of prison on women. I have always thought that prison was there for risks of harm, and in particular for those people who are a risk to public safety. If we look at the figures from various research establishments, we will see that the majority of women prisoners are themselves victims. Many have been the victims of domestic violence or sexual abuse. Many are serving short, rather than long, sentences for the offences they have committed. Many are sentenced to community-based alternatives, with lower levels of expectation in those sentences, because the crimes they have committed have been less violent. To give some figures to show how violent offences among young girls have fallen, in 2006-07, there were just over 17,000 convictions for violent offences committed by young girls; in 2009-10, that figure was down to 13,000. It is also interesting to drill down into the figures and see the reasons why women’s offences are committed: for example, 48% of women’s offences were committed in support of someone else’s drug use, often a male partner’s.
Members will be aware that I have been concerned for some time about how we are using the criminal justice system instead of the mental health system to deal with people with mental health problems. A woman in prison is nearly twice as likely as a man to have had depression—65% of women in prison had depression before they were there, as opposed to 37% of men. The incidence of depression among women who have been convicted of offences is three times greater than among women in the general population. If we look at what the public want for women offenders, we find that they want more drug treatment, alcohol treatment and mental health treatment, and more debt advice, because it is generally accepted that those are the drivers of a large percentage of crimes committed by women.
In 2011 there were 1.2 million convictions, of which 24% were of women. According to the figures for why men and women have been convicted, 52% of the convictions for theft and handling of stolen goods were of women, and 33% were of men. Women are often engaged in petty theft—they are more often the shoplifters, and are more often shoplifting as a way of supplementing their household income or supporting a member of their family. It is not done for self-gain; it is a way of dealing with domestic and personal circumstances.
In 2011, 24,000 women in prison were self-harming. That rate was 10 times higher than the rate for men. As for the figures for mental health diagnosis, 30% of women had had a psychiatric admission before going to prison; 63% of women had been diagnosed with a neurotic or personality disorder, as opposed to 40% of men; and 14% of women had a psychotic disorder, as opposed to 7% of men. We are using our prison system to house women with mental health problems.
In a recent debate in this Chamber, we looked at the criminal justice system and how the police are increasingly having to deal with people with mental health problems because the health service refuses to deal with them, because they are seen as too violent or have a learning disability or drug or alcohol problem. As a result, those people end up in the criminal justice system. During that debate, I talked about a young person in my constituency. I want to highlight that young person again as an example of someone who should not be in the criminal justice system. We have been asked to talk about somebody who should not be in prison; well, she is a young person who should not be.
My constituent is 23. She is about a size 8. I have known her since she was a baby, and she is an absolute little darling, but she has quite severe mental health problems. When—and only when—she cannot cope, because she is in mental crisis and her brain is so dysfunctional that she cannot cope with life, she uses alcohol. The alcohol causes her behaviour and personality to change. Some time ago, she was placed under an antisocial behaviour order. The police have been called to 130 incidents in relation to this young person; she has been in court 81 times and has served 19 terms of imprisonment. She came out from her 18th term just after the debate on mental health and the criminal justice system that I initiated in this Chamber.
I had spoken to the police and the probation services about this young woman. Everybody was desperate for her not to go back into prison again—they knew it was wrong for her—but she is becoming so institutionalised now that prison is the place where the boundaries are there to contain her mental disorder. Just before Christmas, things went very badly wrong again and she went back to court. Everyone went to court to beg that she not be sent back to prison again, and she was sectioned. On Christmas day, she rang her parents and said, “I want to say goodbye.” She was in a psychiatric ward. Her parents got through to the main switchboard there and said, “For God’s sake, get to our daughter—she is going to kill herself.” When the staff broke into her room, she was unconscious, with a rope around her neck. Only by a miracle did they bring her back. A few days later, the psychiatrist decided that she had a personality disorder and discharged her. In desperation, she drank again and was sent back to prison.
That is a young person who should not be in the criminal justice system, and there must be many more like her. We are wasting vast amounts of money and we are wasting courts’ time serving sentences on such people in the criminal justice system, when in fact we ought to be using our health services to find appropriate treatment and care for such women and such people.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. I am pleased to speak on these two excellent reports following inquiries conducted by the Select Committee on Justice. The two reports, “Women Offenders: after the Corston Report” and “Older Prisoners”, raise some important questions and make valuable recommendations about two distinct groups within our justice system. I will begin with women offenders.
Six years after Baroness Jean Corston’s report, which made 43 recommendations to drive improvements in the women’s criminal justice agenda, I and the Justice Committee are concerned that we do not have strong leadership in the Ministry of Justice. That must be an issue. In their response to the Corston report, the Labour Government accepted 41 of the 43 recommendations and set out to implement them under the strong direction of my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), the then ministerial champion for women and cross-departmental women’s policy unit. However, as the report rightly identifies, leadership has weakened in the Ministry of Justice since 2010. It also identified a two-year hiatus in efforts to implement the Corston recommendations. During the first two years of this Government, there was no designated Minister responsible for women in the criminal justice system, and I remember raising the issue on a couple of occasions with the then Lord Chancellor.
I agree with the report that it is
“clear that the matter of female offending too easily fails to get priority”
in the system
“in the face of other competing issues.”
A much-delayed strategy was published in March 2013 by the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), whom I commend for that. It was welcome, but I submit that the six-page document was a vague strategic objective. I think that the Select Committee was right to say that it was produced in haste with insufficient thought. Despite the Minister’s creation of an advisory board, the report states that
“without wider ministerial involvement”,
it will not
“constitute a sufficient mechanism for high level cross-departmental governance arrangements of the sort that Baroness Corston initially proposed”.
Without such ministerial leadership, the board would not have the authority to bring about integrated strategy and co-ordinated service provision.
I also note concerns that the Government’s “Transforming Rehabilitation” agenda may pay little regard to the needs of women offenders. I believe that there is now general agreement that women should not be dealt with in the criminal justice system in the same way as men. Women end up in prison for different reasons than men do, and women often find themselves in prison for non-violent criminality. There also seems to be general agreement that although prison is absolutely right for some crimes committed by women, for the majority of women offenders, imprisonment is frequently an ineffective response. The very personal story told by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) hits the nail on the head in that regard.
The report states that such recognitions are not about treating women more favourably or implying that they are less culpable, as hon. Members who have spoken in this debate have pointed out; rather, they are about accepting that women face different hurdles from men in their journey towards a law-abiding life, and that the justice system needs to respond appropriately. Again, I fully support those views. It is therefore worrying that the report has found little evidence that the equality duty has had the desired impact of systematically encouraging local mainstream commissioners to provide gender-specific services, tackling the underlying causes of women’s offending, or consistently informing broader policy initiatives within the Ministry of Justice and the National Offender Management Service.
The report identifies further failings and states that progress on the NOMS segmentation work, which aims to separate out groups of offenders to understand risks and needs and target resources accordingly, has been far too slow. It is fair to say, and I am sure that people would agree, that the last Government made good progress on the Corston agenda, which has fallen by the wayside, to be perfectly honest, under this Government.
Sir Alan Beith
The hon. Gentleman is slightly overstating his case. What we actually said was that under the previous Government, it took a significant effort, not least by the present deputy leader of his party, to bring together a group of Ministers—women Ministers, as it happened—to get cross-Government signing and implementation. Most of those things were not lost in the first two years of this Government, but further progress might have been more rapid and productive if some kind of similar leadership group had been got together.
Karl Turner
I accept that point from the Chairman of the Select Committee, but I think it is absolutely fair to say that during the first two years of the coalition Government, there was no Minister responsible for this area. I respectfully submit that that has been a factor. The governance structures built by the last Government seem to have been pulled down, and the consensus of the majority of witnesses to the inquiry was that progress appears to have stalled under the coalition Government.
In evidence to the Committee, Baroness Corston referred to the previous Government’s abolition of routine strip searches and praised the fact that dedicated funding had been made available to establish community-based women’s centres. Again, I and other Opposition Members are concerned that those centres, which are making a difference in our communities, have suffered funding cuts under the coalition Government. There are now serious concerns about funding to local authorities, which use some of their moneys to fund other centres. I can think of one in my constituency, the Purple House on Preston road, which has done a lot of work with women offenders. It has done a massive amount of work, saving the taxpayer vast amounts of money by preventing people from going into custody.
Like the Committee, I remain unconvinced of the extent to which the approach set out in the Government’s strategic priorities for women offenders is truly integrated across Departments. The Chairman just intervened on me to say that the damage is probably less than I was suggesting, but that is a matter of opinion, and frankly, I disagree. It seems that work on the Corston report’s key recommendation—improvements to high-level governance and cross-departmental working for women offenders—has stalled and is in fact being dismantled. Six years after Corston, we still have far too many women in our prisons, and we need to reduce that number significantly.
In addition to driving the Corston review forward, we look to emulate the success of the previous Government’s Youth Justice Board, which presided over a halving in the number of first-time offences by young people, and a fall of a quarter in the number of young people locked up. Targeting specific groups and tailoring an approach to offenders’ unique circumstances have been shown to work. Using the Youth Justice Board as a blueprint for a similar board for women might have the same impact. Will the Minister consider that?
I congratulate the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), on his new job. He will be responsible for this area, and I know that he will take that seriously. I hope that he will look carefully at the report and implement some of its recommendations.
I turn to older prisoners, who were mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). This debate is timely, given the report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons that states that an 84-year-old immigrant detainee suffering from dementia died in handcuffs while in detention. That is a matter for the Home Office, but it is shocking and underlines the fact that the needs of older prisoners and detainees in our prisons and detention centres must be recognised.
Jeremy Corbyn
On our visit to Dartmoor prison, we saw a high level of care and concern for older prisoners, but the facilities were appalling. However good the care and support for individual prisoners, the building is simply not capable of dealing with wheelchairs, among other things. I left the prison thinking that that was not the best way of treating people, and I question the value to anyone of keeping some of those elderly men in prison.
Karl Turner
My hon. Friend makes a valid point that was made in the report of the Committee, of which he is a serving member. The idea of elderly prisoners trying to clamber into bunks to sleep is clearly unsatisfactory, but there is no magic wand, and we must address the issue. We must accept that the prison population is getting older and deal with that. Society generally has an ageing population, which is making us reassess health and social care provision, end-of-life accommodation and older people’s living needs. Although it will not be popular, we must also reconsider the needs of older people in prison.
We welcome this inquiry, and the resulting excellent report, which highlights the exact issues facing older prisoners. It makes some key recommendations about how to address those issues. Prisoners over 55 are the fastest-growing age group in custody, and in the last eight years, there has been increasing evidence of the needs of older people in prison. That has led to a developing awareness among prison staff and prisoners of the difficulties facing older people, and a greater understanding that the response is often inadequate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) said, it seems that prisons are ill-equipped to meet their needs. There are various reasons why our prison population is getting older. Prisoners are serving longer sentences, and they may even be convicted and sentenced at an older age for historical sexual offences; a number of cases of that kind are being reported on in the media.
There is some debate about what age constitutes an older prisoner. Some people argue that due to the early onset of health issues in prisoners, that should be defined as anyone over 50. Others, including the Government and the Justice Committee, argue that it is not sensible to impose a rigid age classification, whether we are talking about those who are 50, 60 or 65. It is worrying that the report states that many older prisoners are being held in establishments that simply cannot meet their needs. We accept that for operational and practical reasons it is not always possible to allocate older prisoners to entirely suitable prisons, but we support the view that NOMS should, as a rule, not allocate such prisoners to an establishment that cannot meet their needs.
The report also raises concerns about fragmented provision and barriers to health care for older prisoners, which is particularly worrying. I support the view that cancelling hospital appointments because of lack of communication between health care providers and prison officers is entirely avoidable; that issue must be addressed urgently.
Mental health care needs are also widespread in prisons with higher levels of depression among older prisoners. It is reassuring that services are being commissioned to address mental health issues in prisons, and that organisations such as Age UK and the Alzheimer’s Society are running specific dementia services in prisons with large populations of older prisoners. However, clearly we need to do more, and awareness training in prisons should be increased. We should consider integrating training packages into standard prison officer training.
The report was damning about the provision of social care for older prisoners:
“The lack of provision for essential social care for older prisoners, the confusion about who should be providing it, and the failure of so many authorities to accept responsibility for it, have been disgraceful.”
Those words describe the position appropriately. The Committee found evidence suggesting that current provision is sparse, variable and sometimes non-existent. It found some areas where social care was provided by charitable organisations or by prison officers, but it clearly highlights a fragmented and failing service.
Another concern is the release of older people to no fixed abode. It is deeply worrying when older prisoners are released to face homelessness. Around 85% of prisoners who are released find, or are helped to find, somewhere to live on release, but 15% do not receive help. That is not good enough. Release to no fixed abode undermines any progress that has been made towards resettlement, and will do nothing to help older prisoners to reduce reoffending.
I support the view that older prisoners who are frail and vulnerable should not be released to no fixed abode because there has been no housing referral, or because it has been delayed. I agree with the suggestion in the report that NOMS should ensure that all prisoners who require accommodation are referred to housing agencies in good time. Older prisoners have needs that are distinct from those of the rest of the prison population, and the Government should look seriously at the growth in the older prison population. It is disappointing that they do not agree with that view. I agree with the report that
“It is inconsistent for the Ministry of Justice to recognise both the growth in the older prisoner population and the severity of their needs and not to articulate a strategy”
to deal with the problem. I urge the Minister to look again at the report, and to consider a national strategy for the care of, and an appropriate regime for, older prisoners.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)
It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Amess. I thank the Justice Committee for the considerable hard work that has gone into both reports, and the Chairman, my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), for the way in which he presented the reports in this afternoon’s debate. I also welcome the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner)—it is good to see him in a full speaking role this afternoon. I am sure it will not be the last time.
Let me start with something that is perhaps obvious, but still worth saying: the Government are committed, of course, to ensuring that the criminal justice system is appropriate for all offenders. The Committee has highlighted the particular interests of two types of offenders, and I am grateful for its acknowledgment of some of the good work that has been undertaken in both those areas in recent years. However, it has also made it clear that there is more work to be done, which we agree with. I hope that the Government’s response showed how we are tackling those areas and recognised that there was more to do.
I begin with female offenders, on which there has been considerable debate this afternoon. I am almost tempted to conclude, given the balance of opinion in today’s debate—for my hon. Friends the Members for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), we are doing far too much for female offenders, and for one or two other contributors, we are doing far too little—that we may have got it almost exactly right, but I suspect that even that will not meet with approval from everyone in the Chamber this afternoon. However, as has been said, we have made it clear that we are committed to assisting female offenders to turn their lives around. To reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, we are committed to doing so for male offenders, too.
A large part of what my hon. Friend was describing related to the sentencing regime, and I entirely agree with him and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North that the sentencing regime should not treat women more leniently than men. It should pass the appropriate sentence in each individual case and that is what we expect sentencers to do, but sentencing in each case is a matter for the judiciary and for magistrates; it is not a matter for politicians. However, what we are concerned with is ensuring that, when the courts decide that someone, male or female, needs to go to prison, they do not go back to crime when they are released. On rehabilitation, which is I think where the burden of the Committee’s report was concentrated, it is right to recognise that different things work in the rehabilitation of different people. Distinct things can be done to rehabilitate female offenders, perhaps more so than male offenders.
Jeremy Corbyn
In our report, we made the point that smaller units, closer to the community, tend to work much better in improving the education and life opportunities of women in prison, and in reducing the rates of reoffending. I realise that that is a big change in the prison process, when we have a number of large institutions for women, but does the Minister have any specific plans to reduce the number of places in larger sections and bring in smaller units?
Jeremy Wright
As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Corston report’s recommendation that smaller units should replace women’s prisons was one of the few recommendations that the previous Labour Government did not accept. We think that it is important to have a balance of provision. The hon. Gentleman may know that we intend to trial a smaller unit on the outside of Styal prison. My right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed referred to Styal’s history and it is perhaps appropriate that we should choose Styal as the location for such an institution. We want to see exactly how that type of institution can perform. The intention will be that women who have the appropriate risk rating should be able to live in that type of environment, and work outside the prison walls but still have access to some facilities in the prison. We will want to test that, see how it works and draw what conclusions we can from it.
In the broader context, as others have said, we have set up an advisory board in relation to female offenders, which brings together key stakeholders and partners, for the first time, to provide expertise and challenge us as we deliver those objectives. My right hon. Friend was absolutely right that that will be effective only with the right kind of ministerial leadership. I pay tribute, as others have, to the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), who initiated the process, and to my noble Friend Lord McNally, who continued it.
I am delighted that the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) will be continuing in that line. I know of his enthusiasm for the task and that he is keen to begin, although I note that he is not so keen to relieve me of the responsibility for speaking in this debate. None the less, he is very keen to begin the task. He has been listening to much of what we have said today, dividing his time between this debate and another that he has been obliged to attend. I know that he is keen to hear more from others about ideas that we can employ in order to pursue this agenda and, to answer concerns that others have raised, that he wishes to explore the opportunities for co-ordination across Government to ensure that the agenda is pursued elsewhere, too. He has begun by visiting HMP Send this week and will take on the cause with great enthusiasm.
Let me say something about our transforming rehabilitation reforms, which have been referred to. Those serving sentences of less than 12 months will, under the reforms, for the first time, be subject to statutory supervision, and all offenders will be subject to a licence period—or a combination of licence and supervision—of at least 12 months in the community. As we were discussing at some length earlier, proportionally more women than men are serving short sentences, so they will benefit particularly from that element of the reforms.
The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) asked whether up-tariffing would be the result of that, and whether some sentencers would pass custodial sentences in the hope that offenders would receive the type of the support that they needed. It is important to remember that the supervision of community sentences will be delivered by the same providers under the same terms as the supervision provided for those released from short sentences. There will be no difference, if that is what the sentencer is interested in, in the level of support provided for someone receiving a short custodial sentence and someone placed under a community order. The sentencing guidelines will remain clear, as they should, that only when it is appropriate to do so should a custodial sentence be passed in any case.
To ensure that all future providers under our reforms take into account the specific needs of female offenders, we are amending the Offender Rehabilitation Bill to require the Secretary of State to ensure that contracts and service level agreements for the rehabilitation and supervision of offenders identify services intended to meet the particular needs of women. We will assess providers’ plans for female offenders and the plans will be placed in the public domain to ensure transparency. If providers are not delivering those requirements, they will be subject to contractual remedies. We will publish data on the effectiveness of those services in the autumn of 2016. That aligns with the way in which the competition process will work: providers are to be incentivised to work with all offenders, and not only the low-risk, easy-to-reach cohort.
I know that many people also have concerns about the future of the network of women’s community services under the programme. Therefore, I make it clear that in 2013-14, we have invested £5.8 million through probation trust contract and partnership arrangements on those services. We expect existing providers of women’s services to continue to receive funding from community rehabilitation companies until March 2015, assuming that performance and demand is sufficient. That sets the groundwork for the expansion of community support to women on release from short sentences in 2014 and beyond. We have also been working with women’s services and the voluntary sector more widely to help build capacity for the new commissioning landscape.
Our recently published review of the women’s custodial estate set out our different approach to managing female prisoners. We are making changes so that prisoners can serve their sentence as close to home as possible, allowing them to maintain crucial family relationships. All women’s prisons will become resettlement prisons and will have access to through-the-gate services. We are also setting up new community employment regimes aimed at getting female prisoners into work on release; we are improving access to interventions; we are establishing and testing open units such as the one that I described at HMP Styal and the one at Drake Hall; and we are setting up, we hope, commercial employment opportunities at Styal.
We are seeking, where appropriate, to divert women away from the criminal justice system. We are doing that through joint work and collaboration with other Departments and key stakeholders, not just on the advisory board, which the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, will chair, but on the Cabinet’s Social Justice Committee. In relation to the point made by the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), we will also be working with the Department of Health to test a core model for liaison and diversion services at police stations and courts over the next two years for those with mental health problems, including many women and, one would hope, many women in precisely the circumstances that she so passionately described.
It is perhaps worth making a final point in relation to female offenders. I know that my right hon. Friend intends to proceed with our commitment to update the House in March of this year. That will include updates on a cross-Government basis.
Let me now deal with the topic of older prisoners and make it clear that the Government are dedicated to ensuring that prisoners of all ages benefit from a safe, secure, decent and productive prison environment. That includes the unique challenges posed by older prisoners. As many right hon. and hon. Members have said, that is the fastest-growing group within the prison population. I am pleased to say that some extremely good examples of best practice are already well established across the prison estate. I know that we need to do more, but perhaps it is worth dwelling for a moment on some specifics.
Wakefield prison has a registered general nurse whose specific responsibility is care for older prisoners, in addition to the medical services available to the general population. That provides older prisoners with access to a rolling programme of annual assessments and referrals to specialist services, including podiatry, physiotherapy and a specialist provider of dentures.
We should recognise the training and support already available for prison staff. The crime reduction charity Nacro has worked with the Department of Health to develop resources for staff working with older prisoners. Excellent work has been undertaken by RECOOP—Resettlement and Care of Older ex-Offenders and Prisoners. That national charity promotes the care, resettlement and rehabilitation of older prisoners, offenders and ex-offenders. Grant funding has allowed RECOOP to employ regional consultants to help to set up interventions and to build capacity and skills to work with older offenders. Right hon. and hon. Members have referred to other charities and organisations that also do excellent work.
However, I am well aware that such examples are not uniformly dispersed across the prison estate. That point, too, has been made. There have been cases in which operational or resource pressures have meant that the care offered to these offenders has dropped below the standards to which we aspire. We need, therefore, to do more to ensure that standards are achieved across the whole estate.
Two of the areas on which I want to focus our attention are the availability of suitable prison accommodation and regimes, and the joined-up provision of health and social care. On accommodation, I acknowledge that the fabric of some of our older prison buildings, such as Dartmoor, which the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) mentioned, does not enable us to best meet the needs of older prisoners, and work is ongoing across the estate to enhance services for all prisoners in line with the Equality Act 2010. For example, improvements are under way at the reception area in Leeds at a cost of approximately £4.8 million, and a new health care centre is being developed at Durham at a cost of approximately £3.4 million.
In addition, officials in the National Offender Management Service are developing a process to assess, across the estate, current accommodation for prisoners with specific needs. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) raised that issue. It will involve a targeted approach, consistent with the levels of need likely to occur, and it should be completed by the end of 2014. The results of that survey will be used to direct further improvement. That, of course, is part of the reason why we believe that it is sensible to move from an older prison estate to a newer prison estate. It will simply be easier to deliver the type of accommodation that all of us in this Chamber agree is the right kind of accommodation and a better rehabilitative regime.
I direct right hon. and hon. Members’ attention to the 2014-15 service level agreements with all prisons. The National Offender Management Service has introduced two new commissioning intentions, which require prisons to assess the individual needs of all prisoners and ask them to state how they will meet those needs. That includes how the prisoners age and how that impacts on individual needs.
We recognise that more can be done to provide modified regimes for those who require them. I am pleased to be able to say that the National Offender Management Service will explore opportunities to adapt regimes in prisons where the needs of the population require that, and emulate the good practice highlighted in the Justice Committee’s report. That will include health and fitness, social and recreational activities, and support groups.
We expect that the Care Bill, which has been mentioned and is making its way through Parliament, will go some considerable way in supporting us, with our partners, to improve the provision of joined-up health and social care in prisons. The Bill will, for the first time, make it clear that local authorities in whose areas prisons are based will be responsible for the assessment and provision of social care for prisoners. We will be working with our partners in the Department of Health, NHS England and local authorities to develop policies on how that will work in practice, leading to the implementation of cross-agency guidance.
The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington asked me a number of what I might describe as process questions. If he will forgive me, I will not go through those now, but I will certainly write to him, setting out what we can, to help him on that. However, I will pick up now a couple of the points that he raised. He and others have raised legitimate questions about where funding will come from. As he says, we will have to discuss this with local authorities in more depth, but the Department of Health will be responsible for supplying the additional funding necessary to assist local authorities with that obligation. He and others made a point in relation to the ordinary residence rule. To be clear, the responsibility on local authorities will be for those prisoners located at a prison within their local authority area. I hope that that is of assistance and that it will mean that we can be confident of seeing, by 2015, real change on the matters that the Select Committee has, rightly, raised concerns about. As the Committee has said, this is an issue of real importance, and I welcome the interest of all those who have spoken here today and of other members of the Committee in it. I know that they will continue to engage with it.
I again thank all those who have spoken in the debate and the Select Committee for all its work. As the Chairman of the Committee is aware, I know, as a former member of the Committee, the hard work that goes into producing such a report, and it is appreciated. He and others will recognise that to reduce reoffending across the board, we must ensure that the criminal justice system is responsive to the needs of all, whether offenders are male or female, old or young.
Sir Alan Beith
I am very grateful to the Minister for the thoroughness of his response and his willingness to follow up on one or two points that hon. Members raised. I can now take the opportunity, which I missed earlier, of wishing the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), well in discharging his responsibilities in this area.
I cannot stress too strongly that the evidence that we received from people who had served in the previous Government was that, with the best will in the world, it took some significant effort to ensure that things happened in respect of women prisoners—of course, they are such a small minority of the total prison population—and that, in both these fields, there is plenty more work to be done, but there is welcome recognition by the Government that we have identified things that are important and need to be pursued.
Question put and agreed to.