Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Twist Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for his long record of campaigning on this particular issue. It is an important point, and I will ensure that he can meet the Prisons Minister and look at what further research might be needed in this area.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)]

12. What steps her Department is taking to support female offenders.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Sir Nicholas Dakin)]

The Government’s plan to support women offenders is clear and ambitious. To reduce the number of women going to prison, our new women’s justice board will support the implementation of the plan. This Government have taken immediate action to ensure that girls will never again be held in youth offender institutions following the publication last week of Susannah Hancock’s review into girls in the youth estate.

[Liz Twist]

Self-harm in prisons is now at the highest rate ever recorded. In women’s prisons, the rates are eight times higher than in men’s prisons—shockingly, one in three female prisoners has self-harmed. Does my hon. Friend share my deep concern about those figures, and what is the Department doing to tackle that issue effectively?

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

I certainly share my hon. Friend’s deep concern about that issue, which she is right to raise. Good relationships between staff and prisoners are essential in our efforts to identify and manage the risks of suicide and self-harm. We are providing specialist support to establishments rolling out tailored investments, including specialised training for new officers, recruiting psychologists to support women, and piloting a compassion-focused therapy group designed for women.

--- Later in debate ---

[Shabana Mahmood]

The whole House can see that the only pretence at a job is the one that the shadow Lord Chancellor is making, because he is pretending to be the Leader of the Opposition. We all know exactly what he is about. My reaction to what has happened in relation to the Sentencing Council’s guidelines was very clear when I made the oral statement last week in this House: we will never stand for a two-tier approach to sentencing. I am actually getting on with fixing the problem, rather than looking for a bandwagon to jump on, which is why I have already written to the Sentencing Council. I will be meeting it later this week, and I have made it very clear that I will consider its role and its powers. If I need to legislate, I will do so, but I will ensure that whatever changes I bring forward are workable and deliver the fair justice system that we all need and deserve—one that his Government did not deliver.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)]

T4.   The principle of equality before the law is integral to our justice system, but the new guidelines from the Sentencing Council—which were welcomed by the previous Government—have put that principle at risk. Does the Lord Chancellor agree that Conservative Members have a lot of explaining to do?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I notice that in all his references to letters, the shadow Lord Chancellor did not refer to the letter from the previous sentencing Minister, now the shadow Transport Secretary, who welcomed those guidelines. He knows full well that that was a reference to the guidelines around race, ethnicity and cultural background.