Women’s Safety

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I am conscious that the case to which my noble friend alludes is a terrible one, and officials in the Home Office are very alive to it. The safer streets fund has worked with various local authorities to reduce the risk of incidents of indecent exposure. In particular, one project at the Basingstoke Canal had the effect of reducing incidents by 55%. Clearly there is much more to be done, but I assure my noble friend that that work will continue.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

The ambition of the department is to ensure that women and girls have absolute confidence in the police. I appreciate the difficulties that have been caused by recent court cases. I should add that in January we launched a fund worth £36 million for police and crime commissioners to increase the availability of interventions for domestic abuse perpetrators. These aim to improve victims’ safety and to reduce the risk posed by the perpetrator. I hope all these measures will generate increased confidence among women and girls.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope that on International Women’s Day women’s voices might be given a little more prominence. I want to raise the issue of sexual harassment in public places. While it is very clear that not all men sexually harass women in public spaces, it would be hard to find a single woman who has not experienced it at some point in her life. What is being done to address that? There has been a call for misogynistic sexual harassment in public spaces to be addressed as a crime and to be more effectively dealt with. It is one of those things that blight women’s lives. Social media has disinhibited people so that, in the very way that we are seeing this happen online, we are now seeing it increasingly experienced by women offline, and it leads on to more serious crime. What is the state going to do about introducing a law to protect women in the streets, at bus stops and on public transport as they go about their lives?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I agree with almost everything that the noble Baroness has said. I am delighted to confirm that the Government will support the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Bill, advanced by the right honourable Greg Clark, which would make public sexual harassment a specific offence. It provides that if someone commits an offence under the existing Section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986—that is, intentionally causing harassment, alarm or distress—and does so because of the victim’s sex then they could obtain a higher sentence of two years rather than six months.

Security Threat to UK-based Journalists

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, these debates have been rehearsed at considerable length over the past few weeks on the National Security Bill. I have nothing more to add. Obviously, SLAPPs are outside the scope of that Bill, but I am sure that we will come back to this subject frequently.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I too have great concerns about the use of our courts to silence journalists who are speaking truth to power, so I reinforce what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. But I also congratulate the Government for taking a strong stance on Iran. What happens to journalists also happens to lawyers, and it is a source of great concern to the International Bar Association and its Institute of Human Rights, which I direct.

We run a media freedom project that was initiated by the UK Government, and a growing source of alarm and concern is transnational oppression—the long arm of some of the worst states, the totalitarian states and those that are only too ready to kill, as well as to put journalists and human rights advocates in fear. We are seeing a greater expansion of that reach and I would like to ask whether that is being addressed inside government and the security services. We saw it in the murder of Khashoggi and in going after journalists internally and abroad. It is the same for lawyers; those who are confronting the Chinese are themselves having problems. Are we taking active steps to deal with that transnational oppression?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question and, yes, we are. The security services are very alive to these threats. She could have mentioned a number of others from recent memory, such as Litvinenko, Skripal and so on. We are very aware of the scope and scale of the emerging threats that she so eloquently described. I will not comment on the operational side of this, but I am very reassured that the security services are on top of it.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, it should surprise no one in this House that I am going to speak on the Government’s disgraceful plans to remove rights, undermine vital citizens’ protections and attack liberty, while at the same time pretending to be great champions of freedom. The background briefing to this part of the gracious Speech about creating a Bill of Rights describes meeting the needs of society, commanding public confidence, protecting the human rights framework from abuse and imbuing the justice system with a dose of common sense. The pens of spin doctors must have been very busy, because it will do none of those things—none.

We have a justice system, as others have mentioned, that is falling apart. We have seen the destruction of legal aid; the demolition of the probation service; the de-professionalising of the legal profession; the overpacking of prisons; attacks on our judges; disrespect for lawyers who act for the poorest—and we hear not a word about addressing the massive backlog of tens of thousands of cases waiting to be tried. Weasel words are uttered about creating a new law for victims. How do you help victims when they have to wait years for the resolution of their cases? This should come as no surprise, as this Government have shown so brazenly their contempt for law and rules, whether regulations on parliamentary conduct, national statutes or international laws. They can put in place Covid regulations carrying policing penalties one minute, and breach them the next. They can have their name on a UN convention, such as the genocide convention or the refugee convention, and ignore their obligations. They can sign a treaty on our departure from the European Union one minute, and seek to unilaterally dismantle it the next. They can make strong statements about eradicating bullying from Parliament one minute, yet when one of the Cabinet cohort is found guilty of chronic bullying, it carries no consequences. The arbitrators and victims are the ones who end up out of jobs.

Rules exist about not profiteering from being a parliamentarian, yet when one of the Government’s loyalists is found to have contravened the rules repeatedly, the Government try brazenly to rewrite the rules. Of course, for some, the law is to constrain just the little people. Populist Governments the world over do not want rights to be equally available to everyone: that is one of their hallmarks. What this Bill of Rights pursues is a society in which not everyone is equal in their access to justice; where the Government can act in ways that undermine people’s rights without fear of oversight by the courts; a place in which the state does not owe a duty to safeguard our rights, whether in the everyday circumstances we all experience or in the extreme situations that we hope will never happen to us or to our children. This is about an abject undermining of the rule of law, let us be clear, yet the United Kingdom wants to be recognised throughout the world as the great protector of the rule of law.

Not all of your Lordships who are members of the Conservative Party condone this behaviour. Quite a number of your Lordships are disgusted by it but, sadly, too few of you speak out. I pay tribute to those of you who do. Unfortunately, however, the hard right has control of your party. This is a callous, swaggering Government of the hard right, full of notions of entitlement and motivations of power and greed—and, let us be clear, a disregard for law—and they are capable of shocking disregard for truth. The country is facing potentially cataclysmic financial problems and yet the Government have no answers to that. Their lethargy regarding the desperate hardships so many are facing is astounding, yet they are quick off the mark to savage the right to protest, one of the fundamental rights in a democracy, and quick to reduce human rights. Make no mistake—that is what the Bill of Rights plan is set to do.

There are also serious questions. How can you possibly diverge from the jurisprudence of the European court and remain part of that framework? What will the impact be on Northern Ireland when it was fundamental to the Good Friday agreement and the peace process that there would be the human rights protections of the European Convention on Human Rights? What is the response to the Scottish and Welsh Government’s opposition? I do not think the Government have given much thought to the impact on the devolved nations and how it reinforces the message that Westminster does not give a hoot about their concerns or desires. This is of course all about giving red meat to their own hardliners. Will the Minister commit to a robust pre-legislative scrutiny process as recommended by the JCHR? Will the Government publish the Bill beforehand so that we can all have the opportunity to scrutinise it, and will there be a rigorous equality impact statement?

This Queen’s Speech is a pathetic response to a real and serious set of crises facing this country—the economic, criminal justice, NHS and care, energy and climate crises—but at the heart of it is an even more serious crisis: a crisis of our politics and the absence of ethics at the heart of government. That is the scandal we are now facing. This Bill of Rights is a supreme example of levelling down. Shame on you.

Homes for Ukraine Scheme

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harrington of Watford (Con)]

I promise the noble Lord that I will engage in that process—in the two weeks that I have been in the job, I have not done so. It is something that we must do.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

I also welcome the noble Lord to his role. I have heard only good things about him, and I wish him well in what he is doing—it is so important. First, I will ask something that was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay: how many Ukrainians have arrived in this country under the system that has been created? We have not heard the answer to that question. Secondly, why cannot women with young children be allowed in—and, if there is any concern, a centre for DNA testing be created immediately? That can be done so simply nowadays; honestly, it is not complex any more. That is a route for dealing with this problem. My other point is that people are applying using their mobile phones, but it is very difficult to do so with young children when you do not have access to a computer. Like others, I say that the simplification of this system is absolutely imperative.

[Lord Harrington of Watford (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her good wishes, although I may not receive them after I answer this question because, for the moment, I cannot give her the answer that she wants, which is the number of visas that have been successfully submitted. The scheme is new—

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

Once and for all, we need to demonstrate that the recording of misogynistic crimes across England and Wales will happen. We want to know who will make it happen, how it will happen and—although it probably will not happen—when it will happen. It would be nice to know whether it will happen at a slightly faster rate than our R&R programme, because if it is anything like that I will not be around by the time these crimes are recorded. We have a sort of chicken and egg situation: we need to have reliable data about the incidence of these crimes and behaviours in order to inform the debate about how we can best create specific laws to try to address this. We cannot do one without the other. That is why I beg to move.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Russell. I am glad that he referred to the fact that Scotland had commissioned a report on this. Indeed, the report, which I chaired the working group to complete, took the same view as the Law Commission of England and Wales, in that we did not suggest that there should be a hate crime relating to sex or gender. In fact, we felt that misogyny is different in its nature and that the hate crime framework is not an appropriate way to deal with the problem.

I voted for the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, because nothing else seems to be on offer at the moment in England and Wales, but Scotland is looking at the creation of misogyny legislation. That is not because misogyny should be criminalised, because ways of thinking should never be criminalised. I have said that in this House before. I spoke only last Thursday in the International Women’s Day debate, in which I described how important it is to protect ways of thinking, because in our forum internum is our creativity, imagination and the ways in which we solve the world’s problems. Unfortunately, it is also the seat of the rather negative sentiments that people might feel, such as hatred. It is the actions that flow from that way of thinking that one has to look at and see whether they are appropriately criminalised.

In this House, we repeatedly have debates about the failure to prosecute rape, about domestic violence, stalking, revenge porn and so on. These continue to be insoluble and difficult to prosecute because of the mindsets of many of the decision-makers—even police officers on the ground, those prosecuting and making decisions about prosecuting, and those within our courtrooms. Unless we deal with this way of thinking in our society, we will continue to have these problems. I say that as someone who has practised at the Bar for more decades than I care to count. I have written about this and studied it. I have spent time looking at other jurisdictions, all of which have the same problems. Misogyny is a problem at the base of all this. Unless you address it seriously, you will not address the problems of how we deal with this continuing flourishing of crime against women and girls.

I urge the Government—any Government—to address misogyny. Our world is filled with it; it is a serious problem, and the way to address it is by trying to shift the dial among those who make the decisions to make them address their own way of thinking. That is what we sought to do in the working group that worked on this in Scotland. I urge all noble Lords to read the recommendations we made, because it is a serious piece of work. It is not knee-jerk or about saying, “Let’s just draw down the hate crime stuff”, because we are talking about what happens to 52% of our population. There is hardly a woman who will not be able to describe having been harassed, spoken to in unacceptable ways, degraded, humiliated or dehumanised at some point in her lifetime. That is what women are complaining of, and it is every woman, so let us have that in mind.

I heard what the Minister said about seeking to address this seriously. The Law Commission said that it was not within its remit to look at whether there should be a public harassment offence. We decided on having a public misogyny harassment offence and did not make it simply about sexual harassment, because the harassment is not of a sexual nature for older women; it is not the saying of the gross things that we have heard about from so many women.

What has happened in our society, and the reason why this is so urgent now, is that the internet—social media—has disinhibited people to say things that they would normally keep to themselves, even if they did have those intents on some women. Even if they did want to degrade and humiliate women, they would keep it to themselves. However, the internet has allowed people to pour this stuff out and it is translated on to the street. What used to be only online five years ago is now happening at the bus stop.

I want people to have this in mind; it is not some trivial matter. Noble Lords must see the enormity of the problem now: the stuff that is said to young women coming out of student unions, pubs and clubs would make men in this Chamber ashamed of their own gender—their own sex. Something has to be done about it. It is very different from what is experienced by men, so let us not make this mad equivalence, as though men at the end of their night in the pub say to each other, “Charlie, text me when you get home.” Men do not do that, because they do not have the same fear built into them from the age of nine that somehow there is something fearful out there, and it takes male form. That is the problem for girls and women: they are brought up knowing that there is something to be afraid of.

We really have to take this seriously. I support what the noble Lord, Lord Russell, has asked us to do because it is a signal to the women out there that we take it seriously. Women came in front of our commission and said that something has to be done. It may be that, in the longer term, we will have to introduce a misogyny Bill, like in Scotland. We advocated that where there is an offence, such as assault, threatening behaviour or criminal damage, judges can enhance the sentence so that there is an aggravation. It should not be inside a hate crime Bill, because it is different.

Most men do not hate women, but somehow from boyhood they breathe in this sense of entitlement and now feel entitled to say publicly things to women that noble Lords would not believe. Women who are parliamentarians, who write in newspapers or are campaign leaders receive online and now offline the most egregious threats to be raped or killed, which put them in fear. Is it any wonder, therefore, that women do not want to take part in public life or step forward to ask for equal pay or an improvement in their status in the workplace? They are undermined in their self-confidence and self-worth. We have to do something about it.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I disagree with this amendment, but I agree with one part, at least, of what the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, just said: any woman will indeed have heard the vile abuse that is spewed out online and can go offline to the bus stop, as she indicated. There is a coarsening of what is said to women, but that is my challenge: although it is vile, legislation to deal with what is said to women could well be a serious challenge to free speech.

Free speech matters because an emphasis on the cause of women’s safety could well be, and some women certainly believe so, at odds with the cause of women’s freedom and liberation. Despite everything, if we are going to say that words matter, by constantly talking about misogyny as a problem that is so rife in society we are, as I have said, in danger of frightening young women into believing that misogyny is indeed everywhere and that all men are misogynists and so on, so I want some caution here.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

There was concern in Committee about the impact this clause would have on vulnerable groups—for example, faith groups.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

Will the noble Lord give way?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

I am not sure that one generally takes questions on Report. I am newer than the noble Baroness, and I do not want to be rude; equally, I want to maintain the approach of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, since post Brexit, the EU’s Dublin III regulation no longer protects the rights of unaccompanied children. Therefore, along with many of your Lordships, I strongly support this measure, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, who has very simply and eloquently indicated that it is a matter of honour that an equivalent to the Dublin regulations should now by us be put in place.

Any ambiguity would thereby be removed and instead we would make sure, as the Dublin regulations used to, that unaccompanied children and certain other people in Europe are able to come here for asylum if a close family member should already be in the United Kingdom.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group. I particularly want to mention the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Dubs, and spoken to powerfully by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, about the importance of reunion of families.

As some noble Lords will know, I have recently been involved in the evacuation of women judges from Afghanistan. The first flight that I was involved in getting the women out on had 30 women on it. Unfortunately, I was woken at 5 am by a call from our point man at Mazar-i-Sharif airport, who said that the husband of one of the women judges had an out-of-date passport. It was not long out of date, but it was out of date, so he would not be allowed on the plane. I spoke to the woman judge, who I had got to know through her desperate communications with me. She was weeping, and I could hear her children weeping. I told her to get on the plane with her children and that I would do everything I in my power to get her husband to join her.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

50: After Clause 37, insert the following new Clause—
“Emergency visas
(1) The Secretary of State must, within a period of six months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, amend the immigration rules in order to ensure that persons at particular risk are entitled to enter the United Kingdom and be provided with temporary abode.(2) For the purposes of this section, “persons at particular risk” include—(a) a human rights defender who is at an imminent risk to his or her life;(b) a person who is targeted because of their protected characteristic and is at an imminent risk to his or her life.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would allow persons at particular risk to be able to be provided with safety in the UK, in line with the Government’s commitments from 2019.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

Having heard the response of the noble Baroness, I would ask that she might indicate whether she would be happy to meet with me to discuss the delay in the operation of this, because I understood from what she said that Covid had got in the way of perfecting this emergency visa arrangement with the UNHCR. I would like to know how expeditious that can be, and it may be by sitting with the noble Baroness and having a conversation we can resolve that. So I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

I am sorry, but the noble Baroness has spoken to the amendment. I must now put the Question.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

I was just asking for an indication from the Minister; I am with withdrawing my amendment.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness will be able to withdraw her amendment after the Question has been put.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

That is correct. It is now in the hands of the noble Baroness: does she wish to seek leave to withdraw?

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

I seek leave to withdraw.

Amendment 50 withdrawn.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Thursday 3rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

I accept that point, but I do not accept the point that large centres cannot work if they are properly designed and managed. That is not necessarily a reason for rejecting the possibility of there being larger reception centres, albeit that they may be built around buildings that have existed before.

When my noble friend the Minister replies, I am looking for her to say that we have no more Napier barracks hidden away somewhere, that we are moving in the direction of travel given by the right reverend Prelate and that, with that provision, we should continue to be prepared to provide centres that may be larger because they answer some of the requirements and traumas that those unfortunate people are experiencing.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I support these amendments and pay tribute to those whose names are attached to them, because they all raise important issues. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Horam, that there was something of a Freudian slip when he suggested that we were here dealing with illegal immigrants. Perhaps the tabloid newspapers are having too much of an effect on his view of what is happening.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

Surely in many instances we will not know the state of their claim when those people are accommodated in the reception centres. They will not know, and we will not know, what their status is.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

It was the assumption that we were talking about illegal immigrants. The vast majority of the people coming through are asylum seekers and have good reason to be seeking asylum.

The reason I got to my feet was not really to reprimand the noble Lord, Lord Horam; it was to raise a question that came from my own experience. When it became public that we had been evacuating judges and prosecutors from Afghanistan, because they were in mortal danger, to a lily pad—a temporary location—in Greece, the number of communications I received from people and families up and down the country with additional accommodation and offering to make it available to any of those seeking refuge from persecution was extraordinary. I know that the answer will be given from the Front Bench that of course we encourage people to contact a central line and to put their names down to say that they might make such an offer, but many of those who contacted me, where I gave them that advice, told me that no one had ever contacted them. I just wonder whether the good will of the British people who could offer accommodation is really being tapped into, rather than piling people into camps such as this one.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 17th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope the noble Lord does not think I am being discourteous to the House by making a short intervention in this important debate. We have to be very careful about legal definitions of sex and gender. Primarily, the definitions are not legal but are in fact biological, as I have said in this Chamber before. That is a problem. That is one of the reasons why I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, just said. For example, we have to understand that there are situations in which there might well be problems with—whatever you call it—misogyny or hate. Take a transgender woman who was originally assigned as a male and still has the genes of a male, and possibly some of the hormonal function of a male, who competes in a sporting event. That is a difficult issue that has not yet been properly dealt with. Clearly, it is quite likely that from time to time those sorts of situations will cause considerable anger, hostility and all sorts of effects that might be an offence under the Bill. We at least need to record that and decide how we deal with it.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment, and I want to deal with one or two things that have come up in this discussion. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, suggested that the evidence base is very thin. The evidence base of women receiving threatening and abusive behaviour and sometimes assault, accompanied by expressions that make it very clear that it is directed at them as women, is substantial. I have just been receiving evidence for a working party in Scotland, and over this past year it has been shocking to see the extent to which this is a serious problem for girls and women. It should not be underestimated, and of course it is accelerated by social media, which is encouraging the kind of verbal assault that is so disgusting and disgraceful that it is hard to imagine women and girls having to deal with it in their daily lives. It really is endemic, so I do not think that what we are trying to do here can be minimised.

As for suggesting that we introduce a complicated debate about the comparatively very few women who are trans women and might be included in this, that seems just extraordinary to me. It is a diversion from the fact that women, who make up more than 50% of the population and are not a minority, are experiencing this on a daily basis. Let us get real about it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, has pointedly made something part of her amendment. She says that the focus of this is on the perpetrator. How does it come about that an aggravation is used? It is because there is evidence, in addition to the evidence of a regular crime, that it has been motivated by antagonism and hatred towards women.

Of course, misogyny is wider than simple, old-fashioned hating. It is about a sense of entitlement, usually by young men, towards women and their bodies. The ways in which women have to experience verbal nastiness of a high level undermine their self-confidence and self-expression, so this is really damaging in our society. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, says it is a nonsense to suggest that this leads on to more grievous crime. I am afraid that it is not a nonsense, because we know that it normalises certain kinds of behaviours that then go undetected by the police.

I really want us to think seriously about how we stop this happening. When women say this has to stop, what is the answer? A misogynistic aggravation is not the answer; it will not solve all the problems, but it is a starting point to let women know that misogyny is taken seriously by the legislature. That is why I support this amendment to the Bill.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Lords Hansard - part one & Report stage
Monday 10th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, the amendments in this group propose the establishment of a women’s justice board, along the lines of the Youth Justice Board. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for adding their names.

The drafting of the two amendments remains as it was in Committee, and closely reflects the wording of the provisions in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 establishing the Youth Justice Board. When we debated these amendments in Committee, on 17 November, they enjoyed widespread support from everyone, except the Minister. The diversity and unanimity of the support we received, I suggest, speaks volumes. Indeed, the support from the Labour Party was unqualified. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said:

“We on this side of the Committee strongly support these excellent amendments”.—[Official Report, 17/11/21; col. 327.]


He spoke of the need to give real drive to the movement to further the needs of women within the criminal justice system.

No one disputes that the Youth Justice Board has been a resounding success. It has concentrated effort on recognising and addressing the special needs of young people within the criminal justice system. It has diverted many away from involvement with the system, and offered help and support to those who have been convicted and sentenced, both with community sentences and in custodial settings. The figures speak for themselves: in the last 15 years, the number of under-18s in custody in this jurisdiction fell by about three-quarters, to well under 800 now.

The establishment of a women’s justice board could, we believe, achieve similar success for women, by concentrating effort and resources on helping women who come into contact with the criminal justice system, diverting them from custody, improving the effectiveness of community sentences for women, increasing their use in consequence, and building ways of offering women offenders specialist support with the special issues and difficulties that they face. In Committee we debated those at length.

We also considered the appalling effect of custody on women and their children. The harsh truth is that 19 out of 20 children whose mothers are imprisoned are forced to leave their homes. All the evidence is that those children are themselves more likely to become involved in crime, more likely to suffer from mental ill health and to fail at school, and less likely to find stable employment as young adults—all to the detriment of society at large. The Minister, replying in Committee, disagreed with the proposition that there is a crisis of confidence in women’s justice. That is not the view of the overwhelming majority of experts and those working in this area, who are all deeply troubled by the lack of specialist support and consideration for women in the system.

It is true that, as the Minister said, we have the female offenders strategy, which started in 2018, and the Advisory Board on Female Offenders. The Ministry of Justice is doing work in this area, but it was working in the area of youth justice before 1998, and that did not obviate the need for the Youth Justice Board.

The Minister said in Committee, and repeated when we met the other day—I am grateful to him for the time and care that he has taken, as he always does, to consider the arguments on this issue—that the key point, from the Government’s point of view, was that we do not have a separate criminal justice system for women and girls, as we do for young offenders. As he put it, there is no separate legal framework; women are dealt with as part of the adult offender population. He drew a distinction, for that reason, between women’s position in the criminal justice system and that of young offenders, whom the law treats differently from adults.

I am afraid I do not follow that logic. It seems to me that it contains a non sequitur. The Government accept that women, like young offenders, have special needs in the criminal justice system. The Minister himself spoke of women having particular needs which we needed to identify. I say we need to do more than to identify them; we need to address them. He spoke of the prevalence of mental health issues, of the number of women survivors of abuse—I took it that he was referring to both sexual and physical abuse—and of the closer link among women offenders between drug and alcohol abuse and reoffending than exists for male offenders.

The Minister did not speak in Committee about the particular family issues faced by women in the system—but the effects of custody on the children and families of women offenders are devastating. We have heard about them, in particular, in the debates on the amendments proposed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester on primary carers. It is no answer to the need for special attention to women’s needs in the criminal justice system to say that women are subject to the same criminal law as men. That fact, of itself, does nothing to address those special needs.

The Minister raised in Committee the issue of the time needed to establish a women’s justice board, but if we could achieve, in 23 years, anything like the same improvements as the Youth Justice Board has achieved in that time, that would be swift progress indeed. He also spoke of the cost implications of establishing a women’s justice board. That does not allow for the substantial savings that would follow from keeping even a few women out of custody, with the knock-on social costs of taking children into care, and the social costs that follow from women’s involvement in the criminal justice system, particularly when they receive custodial sentences.

There is simply no genuine and convincing answer to this proposal. I urge the Government simply to accept that establishing a women’s justice board would be the most effective, and the most promising, way to achieve all that they themselves say that they wish to do for women who find themselves entangled in a system that lamentably fails to address their particular difficulties. I beg to move.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment, because there is a real problem at the heart of criminal justice, which leads to the dissatisfaction that women feel about the justice system. We have created our system around a notion of gender equality that followed on from many years of using the male pronoun, “he”, with the person at the heart of the criminal justice system being a male agent. We then decided that we could not have that any longer, and that the way forward was gender neutrality. But of course gender neutrality is to a large extent a fiction. We know that that neutrality—creating some sort of supposed equality in criminal justice—actually creates further inequality. To treat as equal those who are not yet equal creates only further inequality. I want to emphasise that: it creates further inequality to pretend that we now have equality between the sexes. That is why I feel—although I know it is never comfortable for Governments to take ideas from elsewhere—that having such a board is a necessary part of addressing the great public discontent about the system and the way it deals with women.

I support the idea of a board that looks specifically at women in prison. We know that the majority of them have mental health issues and that their dependency on drugs and drink often derives from backgrounds of abuse: having been brought up in families where abuse was prevalent, or having themselves been at the receiving end of abuse. Understanding women in prison, how they themselves almost invariably have been victims of crime, is one of the ways in which we will progress the system. The Government should adopt this idea.

We need to concentrate on addressing what happens when women go to prison, because often they lose their accommodation and their children are taken into care. The disruption of everything that matters to them is so great that it is very difficult to repair. I therefore support the amendment. It is worthy of this House’s consideration and it is regrettable that it has been dismissed out of hand. There is a problem at the heart of this: you cannot move from inequality to equality simply by saying that there is equality now.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support this amendment. Noting the success of the Youth Justice Board, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, did, I venture to suggest that many of the problems of women in the criminal justice system would disappear if there was such a board, and the establishment of women’s offending teams.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 5th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to reinforce what others have said about the Bill being an affront to human rights and civil liberties. It is an anti-refugee Bill and an anti-asylum Bill and whatever the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, said about dismissing the concern for common humanity, it is a display of a lack of respect for our common humanity. What terrible detriment to the humanity of British people comes about from providing shelter to those fleeing persecution? What possible terrible detriment to the British people happened as a result of offering shelter to those who were fleeing Nazism and the concentration camps? The very idea of pushing boats back to the French coast is totally contrary to international and maritime law, as we have heard—but we do not even have to talk about its unlawfulness; it is about the morality of it.

Similarly, when we talk about offshoring and that proposal, it is not just unworkable, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, was saying; it, too, is a dereliction of our national duties under international law. How are people going to access legal advice of a proper standard that we would be able to rely on confidently? As others have said, the Bill creates a two-tier system for asylum seekers. To criminalise those who come to the UK because they have not secured advance permission is unconscionable, especially when there are no safe routes for most people to get here. People who are fleeing are coming in desperation; they are in fear of their lives and they take the most incredible risks to find sanctuary. When people speak, as the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, did, about the cost of doing so, it is often about whole communities putting together money in order to make it possible for that person to escape likely death.

The Bill does nothing to create legitimate ways of getting those who are at grievous risk to safety. It opens up, in fact, greater possibilities for traffickers and those who exploit those who are at risk. In September and October of this last year, along with a little team of lawyers from the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, which I direct, we evacuated 103 women—Afghan judges, lawyers, journalists and others—out of Afghanistan with their families. They were desperate because they were on Taliban kill lists and we have had to struggle desperately to find final destinations for them around the world. We are still waiting for the promised resettlement scheme here for Afghanis; it still has not come into existence.

The Bill in its current form would have prevented my Afghan women coming to the UK. My Afghan judges are evacuated in Greece, Greece having agreed to be a lily pad, a temporary landing place, but they would be group 2 refugees, which means that they would have to stay in Greece because, of course, it is a safe country to all intents and purposes. Desperate women are also in communication with me still who escaped over the border into Pakistan, Iran or other neighbouring countries. They, too, would be group 2 refugees, even if they have a relative who lives in this country who is willing to receive them. Of course, Clause 15 makes it inadmissible to claim a special connection even if you have relatives in this country.

The Minister is right that there is a crisis in the immigration system, but this Bill is not going to solve it. Around half of immigration appeals against Home Office decisions are successful in the First-tier Tribunal. One-third of judicial reviews against the Home Office are settled or decided in the claimant’s favour. That tells you something loudly and clearly about the quality of the original decision-making in the Home Office—it is abysmal. The starting position is to say no when people apply to enter this country. So, in asking for ideas of how to improve the system, if you want to run a well-run system there has to be better early decision-making, access to proper legal advice and properly run courts and tribunals. But, instead of strengthening early decision-making, the Home Secretary is weakening appeals, creating fast-track processes that are unlawful and increasing her own arbitrary powers, taking to herself the power to accelerate hearings at such speed that there are likely to be illegal outcomes.

There is a whole set of clauses that I could refer to which deal with putting at speed decision-making without the proper legal advice that would make decisions safe. There is a whole set of proposals that we should be concerned about. I want to reinforce what was said by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, about how people who have been trafficked and have come here are modern-day slaves, yet the discretionary leave to remain system is not working for them. In the past five years, only 7% of those of 6,000 survivors have been given discretionary leave. I hope that this Bill will accept amendments to change that, because it has got worse under the current Home Secretary. Likewise, I hope that Damian Green’s amendment in the other place to accept more of the young from Hong Kong might be considered.

Efficiency cannot be bought at the price—

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am very sorry, but there is a five-minute Back-Bench speaking limit. Everybody else is managing to keep more or less to it.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

I hear the noble Lord. Efficiency cannot be bought at the price of reduced fairness. My advice to government is: improve the quality and accuracy of first-instance decision-making and bring back proper legal aid in this area of law.