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

Baroness Neate Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neate (CB) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I feel acutely the responsibility to use this privilege for good and to represent the vital role of civil society in addressing the troubling challenges our country faces. My father often said—really often—“You’re not special; you’re just lucky”. It sounds harsh, but not when you think of the many people who are very special and not at all lucky. I have met many of them in my career. I know full well that great good fortune has brought me to this place.

I thank my noble friend Lord Kinnoull, the staff of the Convenor of the Cross Benches, Black Rod’s office, and the doorkeepers, who showed such amazing kindness to my family on my introduction. I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Hunt of Bethnal Green and Lady Casey of Blackstock, for supporting me, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the Appointments Commission.

I applied to join this House because, for decades in front-line charities, I saw families beset by crisis after crisis, while policy changes were not helping. Charities working in communities know how housing, domestic abuse, child protection and criminal justice collide in real lives. I believed I could bring that experience into legislative debates that too often treat these issues in silos.

Prison is where many of our most pressing social problems collide. I will explain that in a minute through the story of a young woman who I will never forget.

I began my charity career at Action for Children, supporting families in crisis. I was stunned by the scale of domestic abuse at the heart of that damage, unrecognised or minimised as a volatile relationship rather than systematic control and victimisation.

That led me to become chief executive of Women’s Aid. There I helped achieve the criminalisation of coercive and controlling behaviour, more funding for refuges, and changes in the family courts. At Women’s Aid we heard daily from women who were staying in terror because they feared homelessness and losing their children. I came to see that insecure private renting and the shortage of social homes trapped survivors between life-threatening abuse and unliveable temporary accommodation. That is why I became CEO of Shelter.

To return to prisons, Action for Children ran the mother and baby unit at Styal prison. There I met a 20 year-old woman and her six month-old daughter, born in prison. It still chills me that she said that she herself had been born in Styal two decades before. Her mother had offended in a coercive, controlling relationship. She grew up in and out of care, was later homeless, convicted of shoplifting and pregnant when sentenced. She was likely to be homeless after release. She was parenting with confidence and love, but I knew she might well lose her baby.

You see how policies intersect to create those we label “complex needs” or “hard to reach”. But it is systems that are complex and help that is hard to reach. We blame people for the spiral of trauma and harmful or dangerous behaviour, but with comfort, resilience and support when problems first arise, things would be different.

We often talk about charities changing lives, but people’s own courage and tenacity are what change their lives, given the chance. Charities can help achieve the resilience that many of us have from childhood, which for others has been eroded. What I have learned is that policy silos do not help us find answers. Before changing policy, we must understand how lives are unravelled by the systems we create. Unintended consequences are avoidable, but it takes engagement with front-line expertise and experience.

I am not a politician. I am proud of what I have achieved in respectful partnerships with senior politicians of all parties—who trusted that my priority is people facing the hardest circumstances. I am honoured to serve both you, my Lords, and them.