Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

We do that already without legislation. We have been very involved in Europe in terms of trafficking. Human trafficking is a key area under the Stockholm programme, which sets out the EU justice and home affairs priorities. We also helped to shape the draft EU trafficking directive and helped with the first Schengen evaluation on human trafficking. We are working closely with European colleagues. Quite frankly, it is better that we work in the countries of origin, as the right hon. Gentleman suggests, so that we stop trafficking at source by working with the Serious Organised Crime Agency, after which we should work at our borders and then in-country.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

3. What recent discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Justice on the number of women given custodial sentences.

[The Minister for Equalities (Lynne Featherstone)]

The Government are committed to diverting women who do not pose a risk to the public from custody, and to tackling women’s offending. I met the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), who has responsibility for prisons and probation, on 28 July to discuss the community options available to the judiciary, and we agreed to work together on the issue. We noted that the women’s prison population has now reached a plateau. We are jointly supporting a holistic approach to diverting women from custody.

[David Mowat]

The Minister will be aware of the Corston report, which said that women who pose no threat to the public should not go to prison, owing principally to the attendant issues for children and the next generation, yet in the past decade, the number of women going to prison has increased by 100%, which is four times faster than the number of men going to prison. That cannot be right. What will we do to reverse that legacy?

[Lynne Featherstone]

The coalition is committed to diverting women away from crime and tackling women’s offending. We are taking a number of measures on alternatives to custody. There is a £10 million fund for women-only projects that is run by the voluntary sector and that supports community services. The bail accommodation support scheme means that we can support and mentor women on remand outside so that they do not have to go into the prison system. It is important that we move forward on this issue, because as my hon. Friend says, the knock-on consequences of short sentences for women are totally unacceptable and unproductive.