Prisons: Releasing Women into Safe and Secure Housing

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

There was quite a lot in that question. I acknowledge that it is a very important topic. I will pick up on a couple of the points made. The 77% figure comes from the recent IMB report for HMP Bronzefield, and it refers to safe and secure accommodation. That is a different approach to what we use, which is to determine whether people are actually homeless. Do they have somewhere—a roof over their head—for that night? We are very aware of the particular needs of women prisoners. Our accommodation programme is targeted at all prisoners, but we have particular people working in women’s prisons to ensure that women’s needs are specifically met.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, as my noble friend has just illustrated, there are wide discrepancies in the ways in which homelessness is measured for women leaving prison between the Prison Service and the independent monitoring board at Bronzefield. I am grateful that the Government recognise that something needs to be done about this to give confidence in the figures. Can the Minister say when we can expect a set of robust categories to be in place, on which everyone can agree?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

I think that robust categories are in place. We define homelessness, in accordance with the legal definition, as being where the individual does not have any accommodation available and reasonable for them to occupy, including where they may be rough sleeping, squatting or in a night shelter, emergency hostel or campsite. It is very important to ensure that we are all looking at the same data. We publish the data annually and I invite all noble Lords to look at those figures.