Prison and Probation Service

Lord Winston Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I too have very little experience in this area, but I felt I did have something worth saying from a professional point of view. My experience of prisons is not personal but, while I was on call at Hammersmith Hospital, I did go inside prisons to see sick patients when they were quite seriously ill. It was being ignored, but finally there was no doctor present.

I was the obstetrician on call at the hospital and ordinarily I dealt with deliveries and surgeries. However, there was nobody else to see the male inmates at Wormwood Scrubs. I saw the absolute squalor, the appalling circumstances, the lack of hope and the complete negligence in people’s understanding of what was behind these people’s suffering. When one such patient was brought to Hammersmith Hospital still handcuffed, so I could not actually examine his abdomen, I realised how far we had sunk as a society.

There was another patient who was in custody for several years. His wife was a patient of mine who had been desperate for children; she had been trying for a child for almost 10 years and she was getting older and older. Her husband had recently been sentenced and was in prison for, I think, four years. I had spent a year trying to persuade the authorities, who were completely indifferent, including many people in the Home Office, that we needed to get some sperm from this man. We did not need to do in vitro fertilisation; simple artificial insemination was all we needed. It was the most difficult tussle but, at the time, they broke a rule, finally, because of the persistence. It got into the newspapers, and nobody in the newspapers understood the suffering behind that. However, as has been said in this debate, it made a difference later on to the cohesion of that family when the child was born, and I am quite proud of that moment.

Letters I have had from prisoners, sent to me by the Howard League for Penal Reform, show some of the terrible lacks we have been talking about. Overcrowding is massive. There is one prisoner who is clearly autistic—he points this out—and obviously has other mental health disorders. He says he is surrounded by constant noise and cannot sleep. He is unable to express his mental condition. As an autistic person, he is extremely sensitive to noise. This is not at all atypical; it is simply that nothing can be done about it in that environment. Another inmate talks about the lack of training and rehabilitation. He says that sometimes it might finally be available when you are ready to be released for the first time, and there is no chance of learning trade skills. What is interesting about all those letters is that they are not hysterical; they are very calm and limited in what they complain about, but they come to the point very well.

We have a human brain, which is one of the most complicated objects in the known universe. It has about 100 billion neurons. Each of those neurons will be connected up to 2,000 times to other areas of the brain. What we know is that, as the neurons develop and as we learn, new connections are found as a result. You can see this now under a microscope; I have wonderful photographs of this happening. When there is a change in the environment, you can see how the synapses connect up other nerves. If the stimuli in that environment are constantly repeated, you end up learning more and more. You inherit the fixed learning that you need as you get old. What we have in prisons is exactly that; we have an environment which is constant, but constantly against the right kind of learning. Inevitably, we end up with people who are already damaged being damaged more. Their brains are damaged by us. This is something we should recognise. It is essential. The environment is absolutely critical and it is absolutely appalling.

I cannot leave without saying briefly how much I valued the contribution from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, in his wonderful maiden speech. It is not the custom to keep on going on about new Members, but it was an exceptional speech. It is wonderful to see Cross-Benchers of his calibre coming into this House to improve the knowledge and experience that we desperately need in this Chamber. We should be so grateful that he is here. His speech today was a very good start.

Finally, I want to say that this is not a private matter to be sent away. We discuss all the time in this Chamber schools, defence and healthcare. Again and again, we ask the same questions at Question Time. How often do we talk about the shame of prisons? We think that the prisoners are ashamed—but no, we should be ashamed. This is our shame as a society. We need to change this and we need to do a colossal amount about it. As these prisoners know, the prison system is collapsing at the moment; it is seriously threatened. Therefore, there is a threat to us—not to our safety, but to our well-being as people. Let us remember our humanity and try to do something about it.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Winston Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 18th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

I am just carrying on; I am sorry.

Mr Worby was jailed in December 2024 after arranging for a friend’s girlfriend to pretend to be pregnant and acquire abortion pills for him via the pills by post scheme. He then spiked a woman’s drink with those pills to induce an abortion against her knowledge. Again, he could not have obtained the pills if in-person appointments were still mandatory.

Thirdly, in-person appointments allow for possible health risks to be checked to assess whether it is safe for a woman to undergo a medical, rather than a surgical, abortion.

The problems with the pills by post scheme are well documented, with FoI requests suggesting that one in 17 women requires hospital treatment afterwards. These risks were strikingly drawn to our attention by a letter, which has already been mentioned, from more than 1,000 medical professionals who support Amendments 424 and 425. I am glad too for the support of Dr Caroline Johnson MP, who still practises as a paediatrician and brought forward the same amendment in the other place.

The seriousness of this issue was brought home to me when I had the opportunity, in January, to meet with a woman whose sister tragically died after taking abortion pills via the pills by post scheme, leaving behind young children. The medical conditions the woman had, which meant she should have been deemed high risk, may well have been picked up in a clinical context. However, after a telephone consultation, she was sent pills in the post by BPAS and died suddenly minutes after taking the final set of pills.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

I am sorry; I am going to keep going.

This amendment would ensure that women are offered the best possible care at in-person appointments, where medical history can be discussed with a woman.

Amendment 425 is not about whether we are pro-life or pro-choice; it is about safeguarding women. Polling last summer found that two-thirds of women support the return of in-person appointments; a mere 4% support the status quo. Abortion providers provided abortion services before the pandemic, with no major problems for access. I urge colleagues to support Amendment 425, which is a far more proportionate response to the handful of court cases that have occurred in recent years than that offered by Clause 208, which makes matters worse and removes legal protections for unborn babies up to birth. Amendment 425 would not reduce access to abortion for women, but it would ensure that their health needs are properly catered for.

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[Baroness Gerada (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I say to my noble friends who will try to come in shortly that we have had a reasonably long debate on this group and we had a very long debate in Committee. I have begun to hear calls for the Front Benches. I offer the House a reminder that this is Report: the stage when we vote to make decisions. I hope that we can quickly begin to move on to hear from the Front Benches.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful that the Chief Whip will offer me the chance to speak for a couple of minutes. We have always agreed that this is an expert House, and it helps to make sure that legislation is best addressed by expertise where it can be. One of the things we might want to consider in this debate is that there are at least two Members of this House who have given at least 100 years in total to the management of people having terminations of pregnancy —so we do know quite a lot about it. There is also a large number of people who have not spoken who are fellows of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, who I think have been rather insulted by some of the things they have heard today because they do not represent the views of most members.

Having said that, I just want to say two things very simply. I firmly believe in decriminalisation. There is a great deal of misapprehension, as was just shown by the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman. The fact of the matter is that you cannot induce a pregnancy close to term. In fact, I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Patel, will agree with me that it is virtually impossible to induce labour in a woman who does not have ruptured membranes at term with drugs. It just does not work. In fact, both he and I—numerous times, if I am not wrong—have been faced with caesarean sections that we did not want to do as the only way we could get a baby out of the womb when it was in danger. We could not use drugs to induce labour, because they do not work. That certainly applies to pills but even to drugs given intravenously. It is therefore important to understand that a termination of a pregnancy conducted by a woman herself will be an extremely rare event. It would be very difficult, and the idea that pills will work is nonsensical.

Moreover, we have heard a lot about pills, but nobody has told us yet what pills they are talking about. That is very important. The hormones that are usually used in early pregnancy would not work in late pregnancy. The other thing I have already mentioned is that pretty well all late terminations of pregnancy are done for very serious medical conditions. One of the commonest ones is where there is an extremely deformed baby in the womb. I described this during the earlier stages of the Bill, and I will not go through it again. The indications of these late pregnancies are always very carefully and scrupulously observed. They are not done lightly.

I should also add that, sadly, babies born much after 24 weeks still are very likely to be highly abnormal. Even though people often miscarry them when they do not want to, sometimes it can be the very best thing that can happen because these babies will eventually die early with very severe abnormalities.

Recently, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, chaired a committee on this very issue to see how we could reduce the number of premature births. It is a big problem in medicine because of the risks to the babies when they are born after 28 weeks. I shall say no more except that I firmly believe we should really try to understand this from the woman’s point of view. No woman tries to interrupt her pregnancy except with the deepest grief and the deepest unhappiness.

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords—

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Winston Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 13th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I completely recognise the noble Lord’s strength of feeling, which he has expressed on many occasions. However, I just reaffirm that we would go through a process for determining the mechanism around the matters that he raises should the Bill progress, and that is a clear point from the Government in response to his—

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister might be able to help me. I presume that the Government would look at the extensive literature that is available in medical and scientific journals on the action, tests and usage of these drugs in a number of sovereignties where they have been used successfully for assisted dying.

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

As always, my noble friend raises an important point. I will go on to talk about the whole issue of substances, so if I do not address the points he raised, I will be happy to speak or write to him afterwards to make sure that he has had the clarification he requires.

Prisons: Mothers and Babies

Lord Winston Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. He is exactly right: we need to do more and do it faster. That is why the Women’s Justice Board is acting very quickly and coming up with its answers in the next few months. For me, what is really important is the intensive supervision court model, which we are very enthusiastic about, especially the one in Birmingham that is just for female offenders. Instead of them going to prison, we offer the wraparound support services so that they can stay out of prison and stay in the community. This comes back to a subject that I am very passionate about, attachment. It is really important for mothers to be with their children so that they can gain the attachment that, if not secured in their early years, can cause significant problems later on. As someone who was brought up with hundreds of foster children in my life, I am well aware of the issues around attachment in young children.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, an experiment in Oxford some 50 or 60 years ago showed that a newborn baby cat, if blindfolded for more than about six to eight weeks, would remain permanently visually impaired thereafter. We know that the infant brain is developing faster in those first two years than at any other time. I congratulate the noble Lord on what he is doing in trying to improve the environment for women and their children. Does he think that more could be done and, if so, how would we do it?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I have seen all the mother and baby units in our prisons, and they are stimulating and incredibly professionally run. I also know that many foster parents and families who look after children of mothers in prison do an incredible job. But we are dealing with women in the justice system, most of whom are victims, most of whom are very ill, most of whom are suffering from addiction and most of whom have mental health problems too. That is why it is important that the wraparound services that we have to support them do so and do so quickly.