Liz Saville Roberts
Main Page: Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)Department Debates - View all Liz Saville Roberts's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(2 days, 5 hours ago)
Commons ChamberIdentifying children with a parent in prison is important for ensuring that they receive the support they need. Strengthening family ties remains an integral aspect of our work, which is why our family support workers help to re-establish appropriate family ties and facilitate visits from prisoners’ children. My officials are working closely with the Department for Education to determine how much more we can do in this space.
We are sending too many women to prison, two thirds of whom are non-violent and over half of whom have dependent children, and 75% of the time the child leaves home after the mother is incarcerated. That is why we have launched the women’s justice board, which will set out its strategy in the spring. Its goal is to reduce the number of women in prison and, ultimately, the number of women’s prisons.
All Welsh women in prison are held in England, and being far from home adds to the emotional torture of separation from children, but we cannot assess the extent of the separation without public access to Wales-specific disaggregated data. Will the Secretary of State commit to making this information public so that we can ensure that pregnant women and mothers and children have the proper support they need?
The data on how we track the experiences of women across England and Wales will be work that the women’s justice board—once it is up and running—will be able to look into and make recommendations on, which we will pick up in the spring.