Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Lord Hylton Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I would like to explain this amendment to noble Lords who might think it is a little odd. My noble friend and I discussed the amendment that she has just moved and I suggested the wording that your Lordships will see on the Marshalled List, which my noble friend thought was a good idea. At that point the first amendment would have been moved by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, so we sort of knew what we were doing. Other things moved around us.

The reason for the alternative wording was that it seemed to us that to provide something wider than,

“groups consisting only of women”,

would mean that what was being called for was less prescriptive as to the means, and potentially more affordable, which we hoped would appeal to the Government. However, what is particularly important is that it would widen what is known in the terminology as “the ask”.

I will briefly reinforce what my noble friend said about the children of women offenders who are given custodial sentences, and the importance of looking at the issue in the most hard-hearted way. Separating children from their mothers puts a strain on the whole family, if there are other members of the family, and undoubtedly does damage to the children. The advancing work on the neurological impact on children of being separated from their mother is becoming better known. In hard cash terms as well as in humanitarian terms, trying to reduce to the absolute minimum the number of times this happens can only be to the good of society and the public purse.

[Lord Hylton]

My Lords, I venture to intervene in this debate only with trepidation and because in the past I have spoken about the position of women in the criminal justice system. The two noble Baronesses who spoke were absolutely right to emphasise the question of children who are separated from their mothers by custodial sentences. I hope very much that the Government will do their best—I hope that they are listening—to begin implementing the recommendations of the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Corston. Among the things that she asked for were centres for women who are at risk of offending, who have already offended or possibly who need rehabilitation post-offending, post-sentence or during sentence. It would be a great step forward if we could have at least one such centre somewhere in England. Will the Government take this seriously and consider having one experimental centre to see what good results it can achieve? I hope that the Government have also taken on board all the other arguments in favour of the amendment.