My Lords, my noble friend Lady Corston, to whom tribute has been paid again today—as it is regularly, and rightly, when these matters come up—has spoken with her customary passion about the problem which her report so significantly addressed. The implementation of her report has, alas, as yet not gone far enough by any means. The Committee will, I am sure, agree completely with the thrust of her powerful argument this evening. I certainly support the amendment moved by the noble and learned Lord, to which other noble Lords have spoken.
It should not be necessary, but it still clearly is, to remind your Lordships’ House, and indeed others, of the impact of the present system on women offenders, particularly those who end up in custody. There is a shockingly high rate of suicide and self-harm for those in custody; it is much more significant than it is among male offenders. We are in essence discussing those who perhaps will be in custody for a short time, but even short-term prisoners will be subject to the temptation of self-harm, and that will apply, particularly again, to women. It is important that we look at this issue for a discrete group and take the sort of measures that deal properly with their problems. Although we are concerned today with the provisions of this Bill, that will need to be at various levels of the justice system. I hope we will have a sympathetic and practical response from the noble Lord when he replies.
I take this opportunity to refer again to resettlement prisons and women, because there is an issue here that that was mentioned on the last occasion in Committee and needs stressing: the proposal, which is welcome in principle, for resettlement prisons for those in custody who will be returned to the community to be nearer the place to which they will return. I pointed out that there are only 13 women’s prisons in this country and that there might well be a problem with housing women in a women’s institution close to where they live. It is a significant issue and a concern to organisations involved with this issue. It would be wrong to house women in an essentially male establishment simply because that happens to be nearer and there is no women’s institution in the appropriate geographical area. In fairness, in replying, the Minister did say:
“it is very important that we make the best use of the existing provision for women offenders in the prison estate, both taking account of its size and the geographical spread. We will be consulting with both providers and stakeholders to design the most suitable resettlement arrangements”.—[Official Report, 5/6/13; col. 1270.]
It is only a week since the noble Lord addressed the issue, and we are not expecting a result now, but an indication of the timescale for the consultation and who will be consulted would be welcome and would help to allay concerns about this issue. I hope we can get a sympathetic response.
5.45 pm
I also take the opportunity to raise a problem that has not yet been referred to in our debate on the Bill and is not yet the subject of any amendment: the question of black and minority ethnic prisoners. I remind the Committee that the statistics show that, for crimes of a comparable nature and for people with a comparable record, the rate of refusal of bail is much higher for BME alleged offenders, while custodial sentences are more frequent and longer than for non-BME offenders with similar records and for similar offences. The question occurred to me somewhat belatedly but is provoked by the perhaps comparable needs of the other neglected body that we are discussing with this amendment, namely women, and I raise it now because it will the last opportunity to do so before Report. Do we not need to pay particular heed, in the context of the Bill, to arrangements for BME offenders? That in no way minimises the importance of the issue which this amendment raises, which has been so long on the
agenda, but this other item has not really been on the agenda to any significant extent. I hope that, in the course of the Bill, we might be able to look at that. Perhaps the noble Lord will consider it when he replies.
I hope particularly this evening that we have an unequivocal response to this matter and that the Government will support this amendment, or at least take it back with a view to embodying it in the Bill, and give some indication of what other progress we can expect on this critical issue, which after all affects half the population of the country.