Better Prisons: Less Crime (Justice and Home Affairs Committee Report)

Baroness Davies of Devonport Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Davies of Devonport (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is an honour to participate in this debate and to follow the noble Baroness. I thank noble Lords in all parts of the House for their warm welcome and pay tribute to my sponsors, my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and my noble friend Lord Young of Acton. I thank the officers of the House and all the Palace of Westminster staff for their kindness and time. I honestly cannot say enough about how wonderful and patient everybody has been as we have got lost around these red and green carpets. I thank my noble friend Lord Moynihan, who has been my mentor. I think he wanted to check my speech to make sure that I did not tell your Lordships stories about what happened way back in 1980, when we were on the same Olympic team. Without his guidance I would have been seriously lost, so I thank him very much.

I will always cherish my introduction day. It was a privilege to be able to share it with family and friends, including my 90 year-old father. My dad was my coach, and is still coaching today, but was ostracised for speaking out against the East German state for cheating during the Iron Curtain era. As the coach of the only individual female medallist in the whole Great Britain team in Moscow, which was me, he was still left off the coaching staff for daring to ask for a level playing field for women. On the day of my introduction, he was wearing purple to remember my mum, who lost her life because of the contaminated blood scandal. Without incredible family support, I would not have made it as an international athlete, a career spanning 13 Olympics so far, as either a swimmer or a poolside reporter.

That passion for sport will, I hope, be put to good use in your Lordships’ House as we consider ways to promote the health, well-being and wider social benefits which come from taking part in physical activity. My international life in sport began at 11 and lasted 20 years. There was five hours a day of training, six days a week, juggling school work with the pool. In those days, there was no lottery funding and my choice after state education was retirement or a sponsored degree in America, which I took. I had been training hard for 10 years—the longest holiday being a week—including training on Christmas Day, which was down to Mr Daley Thompson, and for three months I trained with two broken arms. However, to maintain my scholarship, I had to swim full time, so I came back to the UK, took part in a television programme called “Give Us A Clue”, which many noble Lords are too young to remember, and I was promptly banned for receiving £40 expenses, even though UK Athletics had trust funds and athletes were able to be full time. I had to wait another nine years until trust funds were introduced into swimming before I could make a comeback to finish my sporting career at the Barcelona Olympics, if you do not count “Gladiators”— and if only I had trademarked the word “Amazon”.

Those challenges have taught me to be resilient, to understand that no one can keep you down unless you consent to it. Those same challenges have made me resolve to hold up the principles of equality and fairness. I am passionate about the physical and mental health of our children and how to motivate them to be the very best they can be. I feel privileged that I grew up at a time when stereotypes were being pulled down and, most importantly, we had no smartphones and we had free speech. Never before have our children been bombarded with so much grown-up material as they are today.

Here in the House, I also hope to extend my interest in women’s rights, so in that context, I turn to this debate on the Better Prisons: Less Crime report. However, I wanted to highlight the unique challenges incarcerated women face. Of the 88,000 prisoners in England and Wales, only 8,000 are women. The default setting for management is therefore male. It is imperative that we look at how we treat women in prisons in a way relevant to their biological needs. The average stay is only 42 days—just long enough for you to lose your home, your children, to ruin your life, but not long enough to make any major improvements in your poor mental health, or your drug or alcohol abuse, which is more prevalent in the female estate. Shockingly, 82% of women in prison report mental health illnesses.

There are no female prisons in Wales and if you live in Cornwall, you will be put on remand in Gloucester, a round trip costing over £100 for any family member who wants to visit, which is all too often more than the whole week’s food budget. Women need the connection with their children; many are single parents. An obvious solution is the expansion of the third spaces—community-based care centres that offer much closer-to-home facilities. The vast majority of these women have at some point in their lives been victims themselves of crime or violence. Self-harm figures have rocketed in the last 10 years and are almost nine times higher than in the men’s estate.

After talking with Zoe Short, governor of Eastwood Park Prison, which covers the whole of the south-west and Wales, it was obvious that mentoring programmes help to build the confidence female inmates often lack, and could be hugely advantageous, making these women feel like they matter. There was such a successful programme in recent years, but it was limited to men and football. I hope the Government may consider expanding the mentoring programme, and I hope to discuss further what I might be able to do to encourage other successful sportswomen to take up the opportunity of motivational visits, including looking at encouraging more of the physical activity that I know directly correlates to more personal self-confidence.

In closing, I know there are some truly amazing people here, doing incredible work on this subject in the House, and I thank noble Lords for introducing the debate and bringing their extensive professional experience to bear on policy formulation across all party lines.