Prisons: Releasing Women into Safe and Secure Housing

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister in answer to my noble friend’s question said that his vision was that no women prisoners should be homeless. We have seen from the questions of noble Lords, and from the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, my former colleague, the breadth of the problems that women prisoners face when they come out of prison. Can the Minister say something about how he will monitor the impact of the Government’s policy to see that this integrated support, which is the only way in which to prevent reoffending, is actually working?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, integrated support is absolutely key—I agree with the noble Lord on that. We have done a number of things; we have set up a scheme to offer 12 weeks’ accommodation to prison leavers with support to move to settled housing and, by 2024-25, we will be investing £200 million per year to transform our approach to rehabilitation. But of course we need to be held to account on this, and we hold the Prison Service to account on this. We publish data, and the data is meant to be clear and transparent. There has been an improvement in the figures, and I want to see them improve even more.