Women: Representation and Empowerment

Baroness Corston Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Corston (Lab)]

My Lords, I first spoke in a debate on International Women’s Day in 1993 in the other place. I want to place on record my pride in the fact that today’s debate is supported on all sides of the House; 23 years ago, it was greeted with derision from some Benches, so at least we have made some progress. I also want to congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester on her splendid maiden speech. I am one of the few Members of your Lordships’ House who lives in her diocese, and I am proud of that fact.

In the brief time available to me today in this welcome debate, I want to talk about a group of women who are rarely mentioned in this or any other debate: women in our prisons and, in particular, those held in Holloway prison. The prison was built in 1985, so it is certainly not one of the Victorian prisons that Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Justice, has earmarked as unsuitable for modern times. However, it is most certainly the preferred option for London’s sentenced women.

In October 2013, the findings of the Women’s Custodial Estate Review showed that, despite there having been some criticism of the physical design of the prison,

“Holloway must remain an integral part of the women’s estate”.

It is in a key location to serve courts in London and the south-east. Women held there spoke in positive terms about their closeness to family and the ability of their visitors to travel to the prison, which maximises their visits and supports family ties. These conclusions were endorsed by the recent inspection of Holloway by the chief inspector, which found that,

“the central location of the prison facilitated women’s contact with their family, friends and community”,

and commented that an impressive range of partner organisations was involved in delivering the reducing reoffending pathways.

It is important to remember that, each year, about 17,000 children are affected by their mother’s imprisonment. The costs to the public purse in care provision, adoption and fostering, because many of these women do not get their children back, are huge. I first visited Holloway in 1993, and I have never forgotten the first time that I saw a baby in prison. Her mother had committed an offence for which prison was entirely disproportionate—a common phenomenon in women’s prisons.

I made it clear in my report on the vulnerabilities of women in the criminal justice system, The Corston Report, published almost exactly nine years ago, that we needed very few prisons for women but that we needed a network of women’s centres across the country to help these women turn their lives around, become responsible citizens and become people of whom their children could be proud. I pay tribute to the last Labour Government and, in particular, the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw, for providing £15 million to help with the establishment of women’s centres, which now number about 50, although one, alas—Alana House in Reading—closed recently because a community rehabilitation company withdrew funding. This goes to the heart of the fact that the women’s prison population has gone down from about 4,500 in 2006 to around 3,900 now. However, the number of women held in prison for the whole of 2014 was 9,041.

A team from the Inspectorate of Prisons carried out a full inspection of Holloway from 28 September to 8 October last year. Obviously, a huge amount of work was done by prison staff, as well as in the impressive array of voluntary projects which work alongside staff. The resultant positive debriefing paper left staff feeling upbeat and proud of their endeavours. I was therefore staggered to receive a letter dated 25 November 2015 from Caroline Dinenage, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women, Equalities and Family Justice, announcing that the Government propose to close Holloway and relocate the women on remand—45% of whom do not get a custodial sentence—to HMP Bronzefield, situated near Ashford in Surrey, while sentenced women will be held at Downview prison near Sutton, also in Surrey. Women were moved out of Downview a few years ago to improve security and make it safer for men.

The Minister told me that the Holloway site is to be sold for housing. It is important to remember that, in 2010, the National Offender Management Service looked at the potential to close Holloway and sell the site for £40 million-plus—no doubt it is worth a lot more now—but rejected that because of the impact on families trekking long distances across London to outer locations. No one argued then that sending women to much more inaccessible sites in Surrey was remotely sensible or practical, and the idea was shelved.

Then there are the voluntary partner organisations. They are London-based and the chief inspector commented on them in glowing terms. They can and do respond regularly to calls for aid at short notice. The Griffins Society has been working in Holloway for years, and Women in Prison, of which I am the patron, sends in staff regularly to work with inmates in a range of activities. Hibiscus Initiatives works with foreign national women. These women are often those unfortunates referred to as drug mules, but now there are also women who have been trafficked. Hibiscus can assist with foreign language translation and advocacy, possible in a multicultural conurbation such as London but there will not be too much of that in Surrey. These women appreciate the diversity among staff in Holloway, which also reflects the location of the prison. Foreign national women who were held in Downview some years ago hated it. These organisations also do valuable work with the nearly 75% of women in our prisons who have mental health problems, many of which are severe.

The last time I was in Holloway, a Chinese woman there was hysterical and could not stop screaming. She spoke only Mandarin, and Hibiscus found a woman in London who spoke Mandarin. It turned out that the woman being held in Holloway thought she was going to be summarily shot. She had been trafficked to this country to sell pirate CDs and DVDs. It was possible, given the location of the prison, to set her mind at rest.

Holloway now is nothing like the prison from which the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, stormed out in disgust when he was chief inspector, and the National Offender Management Service should know better than this. If the Government had announced that Holloway was to close and the site be used for social housing, but not before a small women’s prison and, preferably, two women’s centres were opened in different parts of London, I would hang out the flags. In the absence of such a commitment, I remain implacably opposed to this wrong-headed policy.