Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Helen Grant and Philip Davies(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
The mixed ability rugby world cup will take place for the first time ever in my constituency later this year. I know that the Minister has met the event organisers, for which I am grateful, and I also thank the hon. Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) for his strong support for the event. Will the Minister set out what support the Government can provide to attract sponsorship for the event, to make it the great success that it deserves to be?
Mrs Grant
I have met the gentlemen from my hon. Friend’s constituency, and they gave me a fabulous black and yellow rugby shirt, which I put on. They are called the Bumbles, and they are fabulous. I will be happy to have a meeting or discussion with my hon. Friend about funding that event.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Helen Grant and Philip Davies(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Mrs Grant
Our £1 billion youth and community strategy is helping to make sure that more young people, especially girls, participate in sport. Sport England is also running a very good campaign, the satellite community sports club campaign, which tries to bridge the gap between young girls doing sport at school and continuing to do those sports in the community when they leave school.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
After the great success of the Tour de France in Yorkshire last year, which gave an estimated £100 million boost to the Yorkshire economy, is the Secretary of State as excited as everybody else in Yorkshire about the route to be declared next week for the Tour de Yorkshire, the new international cycling race which is being introduced? Will he join me in congratulating Gary Verity on the role he has played in organising that, as well as on bringing the Tour de France to Yorkshire, and support my campaign for him to receive a knighthood in the next honours list?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Helen Grant and Philip Davies(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Earlier this week I visited GamCare at its headquarters in Clapham to see the wonderful work it does helping people with problem gambling. May I urge the Secretary of State and the Minister to go themselves to listen to the counsellors, as I did, and to get their perspective on what we can best do to help people who sadly develop a gambling addiction?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Helen Grant and Philip Davies(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Will the Minister explain the conflict between all this concern now about problem gambling online, and the nanny state regulations that she introduced yesterday—egged on by the Labour party—on fixed odds betting terminals, which will only lead to people moving their gambling from a controlled environment in betting shops to similar games and machines with unlimited stakes and prizes on the internet? Surely the proposals she put forward yesterday will only make online gambling problems worse.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Helen Grant and Philip Davies(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs Grant
I always try to listen. These are important issues. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that local authorities have good powers at their disposal to control the location and number of betting shops through article 4 directions and use of their licensing conditions, but of course I shall continue to listen.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
According to the recent health survey, the only two forms of gambling in which the poorest people are more likely to participate than the richest people are bingo and scratchcards. Given that fact, can the Minister justify allowing 16-year-olds to buy scratchcards when for any other form of gambling the minimum age is 18? Will she review that urgently and ensure that buying scratchcards is something that can only be done by 18-year-olds?
Mrs Grant
It is obviously a matter for the Bank of England to make its own appointments. However, these are issues for everyone: for Parliament and for all businesses. We must do whatever we can to make sure that women progress and get into positions of power, and I am in no doubt that that process will continue if we all work together.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
By maintaining the law that allows the Labour party to use women-only shortlists for selecting its candidates, the Minister must accept that that means either that Labour party selection committees are inherently sexist and turn down the best woman for the job in favour of a man, or that we are not getting the best person for the job in the seats concerned. Can she tell us which one of those it is?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Helen Grant and Philip Davies(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Mrs Grant
I hear what the hon. Lady says, but we believe that local authorities are already so empowered. Local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales have powers to ensure public protection by using licensing conditions afforded by the Gambling Act 2005 brought in by the Government of the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman). However, planning is a devolved matter, and it is therefore for the Scottish Government to decide.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
Will the Minister confirm that the recent independent health survey showed that considerably more of the richest people in the country played on fixed odds betting terminals than the poorest, unlike scratchcards, which 16-years-old can play and which considerably more of the poorest people in the country play than the richest? Does that not demonstrate that Labour Members’ problems with fixed odds betting terminals is not about who the money comes from to put into them, but about who the money goes to in terms of their prejudice against bookmakers? If the money from FOBTs went to good causes, would there be any campaign against FOBTs?
Fixed Odds Betting Terminals
Debate between Helen Grant and Philip Davies(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Mrs Grant
That is why there is no green light for fixed odds betting terminals. Their future is absolutely unresolved, pending the research that we have started.
The Responsible Gambling Trust is carrying out research to better understand how people behave when playing on gaming machines and what helps people to play responsibly. It is the largest piece of academic research that has ever been undertaken on the issue. It aims to understand patterns of gaming behaviour and to identify when there is robust evidence that consumers may be experiencing problems.
Philip Davies
Will the Minister confirm that the bookmakers have provided all the information that she has asked for? If that is not the case, will she set out what information she would like from the bookmakers that they have not provided her with?
Mrs Grant
My hon. Friend makes an important point. We need the information from the bookmakers. That is one reason why I met the big five bookmakers in December. They have indicated that they will provide the data we need. To make sure that they do provide the data, a further meeting has been set up with them for 30 January.
I met the Responsible Gambling Trust in December and pressed it to make progress with the research programme. I emphasised to it the importance of obtaining tangible research outcomes by the autumn of 2014. I am clear that the industry must rapidly share data to allow the research aims to be met within the required timetable.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Helen Grant and Philip Davies(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
If fans from New Zealand and Australia buy tickets for the world cup final in the expectation that their team will get there and one or both are knocked out in the semi-final, we will need a mechanism to allow supporters from those countries to sell them on to the supporters of the countries that are in the final. Does the Minister therefore not accept that the resale of tickets for the rugby world cup is not only inevitable, but desirable?
Mrs Grant
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. At the end of the day, we want people to be able to watch a fantastic rugby tournament. The Government do not believe that legislation is necessary to control tickets; we believe that organisers, promoters and ticket agents should be looking at what they can do to protect customers and to make events accessible.
Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill
Debate between Helen Grant and Philip Davies(11 years, 1 month ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mrs Helen Grant)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
British remote gambling regulation is currently conducted on a point-of-supply basis. Only operators with at least one piece of their remote gambling equipment in Britain require a Gambling Commission licence and are subject to the required standards. This means that overseas operators offering gambling services to consumers in Britain are currently regulated not by the commission, but by the regulatory regimes in the countries in which they are based. In consequence, there are different regulatory standards and UK consumers might experience varying levels of protection, depending on the operator they are dealing with.
The Gambling Commission estimates that about 85% of remote gambling activity by UK consumers takes place with operators that the commission does not regulate. The Bill aims to regulate remote gambling on a point-of-consumption basis. With this change, all operators selling into the UK market, whether based in Britain or abroad, will be required to hold a UK Gambling Commission licence, making them subject to robust and consistent regulation, increasing protection for UK consumers, supporting action against illegal activity and establishing fairer competition for British-based operators.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
The Minister says that this is about regulation and stopping illegal activity. What proportion of people is currently estimated to bet illegally in the UK, and what will that estimate be after the Bill has been introduced?
Mrs Grant
At the end of the day, this is about establishing a level playing field. I hope that my hon. Friend will bear with me for a little while, because I shall go into that matter in greater detail.
The Bill aims to regulate remote gambling at the point of consumption. Under the new regime, overseas-based operators will be subject to the provisions of the Gambling Act 2005, its regulations and the Gambling Commission’s social responsibility and technical standards requirements. This will mean, among other things, that all licensed operators will be required to contribute to research, education and treatment in relation to British problem gambling, and to comply with licence conditions that protect children and vulnerable people.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Helen Grant and Philip Davies(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
Is the Minister aware that virtually every new gambling product since the 1970s has been referred to as the crack cocaine of gambling and that to think that this is unique is ridiculous? Given that people can lose an unlimited amount of money within a minute on a five-furlong sprint at Epsom, does she agree that opposition to FOBTs is ridiculous, particularly given that they have a bigger rate of return for the punter—97%—than any other gambling product in any betting shop or casino, or anywhere else for that matter?
Mrs Grant
My hon. Friend raises some interesting issues, but work has begun and we will look at all the evidence and all the research. In addition, we will put pressure on the industry to develop its own harm mitigation measures. We must ensure that those measures work and that their success is evaluated.
Sentencing (Female Offenders)
Debate between Helen Grant and Philip Davies(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Philip Davies
It is equally important that the hon. Lady listens to what I am saying rather than wrapping herself in her brief from the Prison Reform Trust. We have all heard it once but I will repeat it for her benefit. The Ministry of Justice’s own publication, “Statistics on Women and the Criminal Justice System” says:
“Of sentenced first-time offenders (7,320 females and 25,936 males), 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.”
To suggest that more female first-time offenders are more likely to be sent to prison than men is not the case. The hon. Lady says that a higher proportion of women in prison are first-time offenders, but that is because they are less likely to be sent to prison unless they commit particularly serious offences and leave the courts no option but to send them to prison. It is a complete distortion of the facts, and the Ministry of Justice publication makes that perfectly clear.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mrs Helen Grant)
Will my hon. Friend clarify whether all those statistics take into account the type and gravity of offence, previous offending history and all relevant mitigating factors, which sentencers are required to consider? It would be an unjust system if they failed to do that.
Philip Davies
Yes, they do. I will happily supply the Minister with the relevant information from the House of Commons Library, which goes to show, beyond all doubt—I am sure that she trusts the figures from her own Department—that for every single category of offence, for all ages and in all types of court, men are more likely to be sent to prison than women. There is not one blip anywhere. For every single offence, for every age and in every type of court, women are less likely to be sent to prison than men.
Philip Davies
No, I will not, because that is a debate for another day. These are all important issues, but this particular debate is about the sentencing of female offenders, and I am concentrating on the likelihood of people being sent to prison. If my hon. Friend was listening carefully at the start of the debate, he would know that the myth that I am currently exposing is that women are more likely to be sent to prison than men. As the figures that I have just quoted show, that is palpably not the case. I will go through other myths as we go through the debate, but there may not be time to go through every aspect of the criminal justice system at the moment.
Mrs Grant
It is important to clarify something. Regarding mitigation, does my hon. Friend not accept that there may be some factors that are more relevant to women than to men and hence the difference—for example domestic violence, self-harm, mental ill-health and caring responsibilities?
Philip Davies
I will come on to some of those points later. However, as the Minister will know from her Department’s own figures, quite a lot of victims of domestic violence are men. In fact, for certain ages—I think that it is between 20 and 30—there are more male victims of domestic violence than female victims. The point is that all the things that apply—
Philip Davies
The Minister shakes her head. I know that she has not been in her post for long, but I advise her to go and look at the figures from the Ministry of Justice on domestic violence for different age ranges, because they were the figures that the MOJ quoted to me in a parliamentary answer about three or four years ago. They may well have changed, but I urge her at least to go and look at them before she shakes her head.
Philip Davies
We are getting slightly off the point, but I will respond to my hon. Friend’s intervention. The statistics do not suggest that. They suggest two things. The first is that people should perhaps have longer sentences, for which the reoffending rate is lower, not that they should have no sentences at all. The high reoffending rate for short sentences is an argument for longer sentences, not for no sentences.
The second point is that, in the main, someone has to have committed many offences to get to prison. If someone goes to court with more than 100 previous convictions they are more likely not to be sent to prison than to be sent there. People have community sentence after community sentence, and the only reason they go to prison is that those community sentences have not worked—they have not prevented them from reoffending. The reoffending rate for that cohort of people in prison, therefore, is lower than for those people when they were on community sentences.
Philip Davies
I am very conscious of time, Mrs Osborne. I will give way one last time, otherwise no one will have spoken in the debate, bar me.
Mrs Grant
I understand. My hon. Friend has been very reasonable. Clearly, he has worked extremely hard on collating the statistics. I wonder, however, whether he has actually visited a female prison, or some of the alternatives to custody, one of which was referred to by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green).
Philip Davies
I have indeed. I have visited the intensive alternatives to custody in my part of the world and have visited 12 UK prisons, including Holloway and a women’s prison up in Yorkshire—so I have visited two women’s prisons in the UK. I have also visited prisons in Denmark and the USA, to see what they do. If my hon. Friend was trying to suggest that I did not know what I was talking about, I hope that I have made her aware that I have some experience in this field.
Interestingly, no one has, as yet, managed to tell me which of those people I listed should not be in prison. Perhaps we have a consensus that they should be in prison. If people want to limit the debate to the 1,800 women I have mentioned, let us continue to consider which of them should be let out. Perhaps it is the 91 arsonists, the 24 people convicted of violent disorder, or the 45 serving time for kidnapping and blackmail. Perhaps it is the 192 people who are in for serious fraud and forgery, the 320 who have been convicted of importing drugs that end up being sold onto our streets, or the 111 serving time for other serious drug offences. If we do not want to let all of them out, we appear to be running out of options. Perhaps people will tell us which of those women they think should not be in prison.
Philip Davies
My point is that men are parents as well as women. The problems that the hon. Lady articulates apply to men as well as women. The argument goes that this is all about women; it is not all about women. Let us not focus just on the very small proportion of women who are in prison. Let us also think about all the men, too. The whole point of the debate is to make people aware that where there are issues they apply equally to men, and that some of the issues are not even issues at all because the facts do not back them up.
Philip Davies
The point is that 66% of women sent to prison who have children are not actually looking after their children when they are sent to prison. That is the point I am making, so I am not entirely sure why we are all pulling our hair out about people who are not even looking after their children. Those children have probably either been put into care or are being looked after by other family members, probably because the mother is considered unfit to look after the children. Why should the courts treat her less harshly when the children have already been removed from her? It is a completely spurious argument.
When it comes to the minority who are looking after their children, we should not assume that they are all fantastic mothers and role models for their children. Many will be persistent offenders with chaotic lifestyles. Some will end up dragging their children into their criminal lifestyles and some will scar their children for life along the way. We presume it is in the children’s best interest to stay with those mothers. It may not be in the best interest of the child for the mother to be released. It may be in their best interests for their mother to go to prison in some cases.
Others will have committed very serious offences. The same official from the Ministry of Justice said recently of women offenders:
“They can be very damaged and also very damaging.”
That is absolutely right. Sarah Salmon of Action for Prisoners’ Families said:
“For some families the mother going into prison is a relief because she has been causing merry hell.”
That is another worthy point we should consider. Let us, finally, not forget those who are in prison for being cruel to their children—for abusing their own children.
The final myth is that women are generally treated more harshly than men in the justice system. It is clear that women are less likely than men to be sent to prison. Therefore, we need to look at other court disposals to see if they are then treated more harshly than men in other areas. If they are not being sent to prison as frequently as men they are presumably being sentenced at the next level down—a community order. They are not. The Ministry of Justice’s figures yet again show that men are more likely than women to receive a community order: 10% of women sentenced are given a community order compared with 16% of men. The Ministry of Justice goes on to confirm that
“these patterns were broadly consistent in each of the last five years”.
Women are less likely than men to go to prison and less likely to be given a community order. That is not all. Of those who are given a community order the ones given to men are likely to be much harsher. The Ministry of Justice says:
“The average length of all community sentences for men was longer than for women…For women receiving a community order, the largest proportion had one requirement, whereas the largest proportion of men had two requirements.”
I do not want to veer into the realms of domestic violence that my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle tried to go down; that is a debate for another day. However, one thing worth noting about sentencing is that despite all the evidence that shows women as the perpetrators of domestic violence in far more cases than some would like us to think, the community requirement imposed on those who commit an offence in a domestic setting is imposed only on men and cannot be handed down to women. As usual, this shows that the whole issue of equality works only one way, even when we are dealing with exactly the same offence.
Given the more severe sentences for men at the higher end of the sentencing spectrum, it is unsurprising that women are more likely to receive low levels of punishment at courts. It is a fact that a higher proportion of female defendants receive fines. All of that shows that throughout the court sentencing regime men are on average treated more severely than women.
Before I conclude there is another interesting statistic that is worth sharing. There is even an imbalance in the number of women reaching court compared with men, as more females than men were issued with pre-court sanctions. That has been consistently the case in recent years according to the Ministry of Justice. That is the evidence.
All the hysteria surrounding women in the justice system is completely without foundation, yet people want to be seen to be doing something about the so-called problem. We have the Together Women project, women-only groups for community sentences, a criminal justice women’s strategy unit, women’s centres, a proposal for women-only courts and, just the other day in Manchester, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) proposed a women’s justice board. That is all on top of the Corston report, which looked at the whole issue of female offenders and came up with even more suggestions.
Looking at the evidence, there appears to be sex discrimination in the sentencing of offenders, but the people being discriminated against are men not women. Women cannot have it both ways. They cannot expect to be treated equally in everything in society except when it comes to being sentenced by the courts for the crimes that they commit. People may want to argue that it is reasonable for women to be given lighter sentences than men, and that it is right that fewer women are sent to prison than men. That is an argument for another day, but at least when we have these debates about sentencing for men and women let us stick to the facts as they are and not what we would like them to be. Men are treated more harshly by the courts than women. If we can at least have debates that flow from that, based on the facts, we will have made a good start today.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mrs Helen Grant)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mrs Osborne. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) on securing this important debate, and I welcome the opportunity to update the House on the steps that justice agencies are taking to address women’s offending. Before doing so, I want to set out two important parts of the wider context on female offenders: to explain how our current sentencing framework deals with gender and to show how important it is to look carefully at the evidence on how women are sentenced by the courts.
To begin with, therefore, it is important to be clear about how our sentencing framework is gender-neutral: everyone is absolutely equal before the law. The same criminal offences and maximum penalties apply to every case, regardless of the offender’s gender. Alongside that, however, we also need to remember that every offender who is brought before the courts is unique. A long-standing principle of our justice system is that courts should consider the full circumstances, not only of the offence but of the offender, when sentencing. A sentencing framework that did not allow courts to take into account individual circumstances would not be a just one.
In many cases, an offender’s personal characteristics, such as previous convictions, failure to comply with earlier court orders or abusing a position of trust, can all be treated as aggravating factors when sentencing. Other personal characteristics, however, may provide mitigation. Previous good character, age, physical or mental health and caring responsibilities are all factors that courts can take into account when deciding the appropriate sentence.
All such factors may apply to both male and female offenders. For example, that an offender is a primary carer for dependent relatives is the important fact for the court, not whether the offender is the mother or the father. Probation pre-sentence reports give courts the detailed assessments that they need to make informed judgments about the factors that they should take into account.
I should make it clear that courts need to weigh mitigating factors against the others circumstances. For example, although it is recognised that parental imprisonment can have considerable effect on the lives of children, caring responsibilities will not necessarily mean that an offender will be spared prison. The overriding aim of the courts will always be to impose a sentence that reflects the seriousness of the offence and that is proportionate to the culpability of the offender and the harm caused.
We need to bear in mind all such issues when looking at the sentences imposed on male and female offenders. Differences in the type and severity of sentence given to men and women may be attributable to a wide range of factors, such as the type and gravity of offence committed and the individual’s previous offending history.
Philip Davies
Is the Minister therefore conceding—the main purpose of my debate—that for each category of offence men are more likely to be sent to prison than women? She did not say so explicitly, but she was about to give reasons for that being the case.
Philip Davies
I will give the Minister one more chance, because I do not want her to mislead the House inadvertently. She can use her Ministry of Justice figures for the answer. Does she accept that, for each category of offence, men are more likely to be sent to prison than women? We can take all the reasons why that may be the case and we can put in all the mitigating factors, but will she confirm for the benefit of the House, as the Minister in this Department, that for each category of offence men are more likely to be sent to prison than women? The reasons are irrelevant; it is only the facts that we want at this stage.
Mrs Grant
We could go round in circles, but I shall repeat myself: the sentencing framework and guidelines are gender-neutral and everyone is equal before the law. The sentencer has an obligation to take into consideration all factors relating to the offence and to the offender. In our judicial system, if the sentencer failed to do so, we would have an unjust system.
We need to be careful when interpreting the statistics, many of which have been cited by my hon. Friend today. At a high level, for example, the figures show that 10% of male offenders and 3% of female offenders were sentenced to immediate custody in 2011. The average custodial sentence length for males was longer than for females, at 15 months and 10 months, respectively. Equally, however, proportionally more males than females received sentences in 2011 for serious offences such as violent crime, sexual crime and robbery. There were also differences in the severity of offences committed within the groups. For example, 343 offenders were sentenced in 2011 for murder, but only 23 were female offenders.
The available statistics on aggravating factors suggest that a similar proportion of males and females sentenced to short custodial sentences are persistent offenders. In June 2011, around half of both men and women serving sentences of six months or less in prison had 15 or more previous convictions.
A number of mitigating factors are particularly associated with women offenders, including the high prevalence of mental health needs and child care responsibilities. Prisoner surveys tell us that more than a quarter of female prisoners reported having been treated for a mental health problem in the year before custody, compared with 16% of male prisoners.
Women are also more likely than male offenders to have child care responsibilities, and 60% of mothers with children under the age of 18 lived with those children prior to imprisonment, compared with around 45% of fathers. So there is a nuanced story behind the statistics, which reflects the fact that every offender, whether male or female, is a unique individual. Whether offenders are punished in custody or in the community, the Government are committed to ensuring that both men and women who offend are successfully rehabilitated.
For those offenders who are best dealt with out of court, we are piloting mental health and substance misuse liaison and diversion services in police custody and at courts by 2014. We are also developing intensive treatment options in the community for offenders with drug or mental health problems, including four women-only services in Wirral, Bristol, Birmingham and Tyneside.
In prisons, we are piloting drug recovery wings for short-sentence, drug and alcohol-dependent prisoners at three women’s prisons: HMPs New Hall, Askham Grange and Styal. We are also ensuring that courts have the right mix of punitive and rehabilitative requirements available when sentencing female offenders to community sentences. The National Offender Management Service is providing £3.78 million in this financial year to fund 31 women’s community services that can be used as part of, or in conjunction with community sentences. To protect the provision of services for women in these times of financial challenge, that funding will be embedded within the baseline for future probation trust settlements with a requirement that it results in enhanced services for women.
We have issued gender-specific standards in all areas of the prison regime, including training for staff working with women offenders in prisons, now extended to services provided in the outside community, and new search arrangements, ending routine full searches of women prisoners.
Seven mother and baby units in England and Wales provide an overall total capacity of 77 places for mothers, with capacity for up to 84 places for babies to allow for twins. Mother and baby units provide a calm and friendly place within prison for babies to live with their mothers. They enable the mother and child relationship to develop, thereby safeguarding and promoting the child’s welfare.
In closing, I thank the hon. Members for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) and for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), and my hon. Friends the Members for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) and for Hexham (Guy Opperman), as well as the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman), for contributing to the debate. We can continue to improve how we tackle offending together only if we continue to address the wide range of factors associated with offending, whether the offenders are male or female. I welcome the constructive and knowledgeable contributions from all hon. Members this afternoon, as they have highlighted how important it is to continue to focus on responding to the specific circumstances of women offenders.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Helen Grant and Philip Davies(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
16. If he will take steps to ensure that time served in prison by a prisoner reflects the sentence handed down to that prisoner by the court.
Sentencing
Debate between Helen Grant and Philip Davies(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)
We have about 4,000 women in British prisons. A small fraction of them need to be locked up; the vast majority do not. Most of these women are serving very short-term sentences, with 64% serving less than six months. Those serving short sentences are not subject to any supervision on release, and their prison sentences are too short to provide proper rehabilitation. The result is a vicious circle of family breakdown, chaos, reoffending and huge cost to the taxpayer.
Women in prison are a highly vulnerable group, and they commit crime because of this vulnerability and because of earlier failures to protect and support. More than half have suffered domestic violence, and a third have suffered sexual assault. Up to 80% have mental health problems. Many of them self-harm, and many have attempted suicide. More than half have alcohol problems, and 27% have drug problems. When a woman goes to prison, her children suffer too, with homes being repossessed and children ending up in care. Some women are pregnant when they go to prison, and the sight of babies and toddlers spending their earliest moments in a situation that is the complete opposite of a family home is an affront to my senses as a mother, a family lawyer and a politician. When a man goes to prison, a woman is usually there for him when he gets out. When a woman goes to prison, the man is often nowhere to be seen.
The Government’s plans to reform the criminal justice system set out in the Green Paper helpfully recognise that women offenders have a different profile of risk and need. I was encouraged recently by the response of the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), to my parliamentary question on the effectiveness of short-term prison sentences for women. He said:
“Short-term sentences for men have proven pretty ineffective, and I think that short-term sentences for women are even more ineffective…We support the conclusions of the Corston report…we are committed to reducing the number of women in prison, and a network of women-only community provision is being developed to support robust community sentences.”—[Official Report, 20 July 2010; Vol. 514, c. 163.]
Those community offender projects for women, to which the Minister referred, provide a genuine alternative to custody. They are run by charities that work in partnership with the police, the prisons, the probation service and health and social services, and they provide wrap-around support for the woman. They help her to stabilise her life. They find her somewhere to live and ensure that she is safe. They start to deal with mental health and addiction problems, and they allow magistrates to sentence a woman to community penalties with confidence. Early evaluations of the projects look very good, in terms of reducing costs and the rate of reoffending. Those projects have been funded by the Ministry of Justice, and I hope that such funding will be continued, notwithstanding the difficult financial climate.
Philip Davies
The answer to a parliamentary question that I asked revealed that, for every age group and for every offence, women are already far less likely than men to be given to a custodial sentence. Does my hon. Friend agree that the best way to stop women going to prison is for them not to commit those crimes in the first place?
Mrs Grant
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, but this is why we are looking at robust community alternatives to prison.
It would be a missed opportunity if these projects were not expanded, and an absolutely travesty if they were cut. We need a strong message from the Government that prison is not the right place for women who pose no threat to the public. I accept that the public and the judges need to feel more confident about community sentences, and their scepticism must certainly be dealt with. Community sentences are not fluffy options. They are intensive interventions that absolutely challenge a woman to change her life. They will also enable her to see that her future could look very different from her past.