The United Nations has designated this international women’s day as a day when one should look at, in particular, violence against women. I do not want to
look at the failures of the past; I want to look at how we can move forward and address the problems that we face.

This morning, I stood in front of the statue of Mrs. Pankhurst as we laid flowers and paid tribute to her contribution in raising the status of women and obtaining the right to participate in democracy for women. The right to participate in democracy has allowed women in this Chamber, in local authority council chambers and across the world to fight for justice and equality for women. Mrs. Pankhurst set the stone that allowed women to move forward in society. However, Mrs. Pankhurst and her women faced the great consequence of stepping forward, which so many women face across the world. They faced male dominance, male opposition and imprisonment.

I want to discuss women as an exemplar of best practice, but Britain is falling behind as an exemplar of best practice. I joined my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor) on the recent visit of women parliamentarians to Pakistan, and I saw how a country that we would often regard as falling behind in the democracy stakes has moved forward on several issues. As she noted, 33 per cent. of the seats in its legislature—the National Assembly and the Senate—have been allocated to women. I hope that when we further consider the reform of our upper House, appropriate steps will be taken to ensure that a good percentage of women are there as of right.

Ms Dari Taylor: Fifty per cent.

Mrs. Moon: I entirely endorse my hon. Friend’s suggestion of the figures that we should aim for.

In one of the meetings that we went to, Minister Ehsan, the Minister for women and youth, said that the first step that she took when she became a Minister was to recognise that when women are suspected of committing a crime, that affects their families, their status, their children, and their relationships within their communities. She decided that all women should be automatically granted bail pending trial unless they were held on suspicion of crimes of terrorism or manslaughter, because, as she said, when we imprison women and take them away from their families, we are building additional problems for their communities, their families, their villages, and especially for their children. I feel particularly passionate about this, perhaps because we have no prisons for women in Wales. As a result, Welsh women face 100 per cent. of their sentence away from their community, their family, their children and, sometimes, their language—the language in which they prefer to communicate. That cannot be acceptable.

I was pleased to hear the recognition from my hon. and learned Friend the Minister that the women’s prison population has gone up by 126 per cent. in recent decades. The best strategy to reduce female offending is to improve women’s access to work, to improve their mental health services, to tackle drug abuse among women, to improve their family ties, and to improve the life chances of young women through our schools and in our communities. I have to acknowledge that the Government have achieved a lot on all five of those methods. However, every time we move forward—it is the great challenge for politicians—our communities say, “Well done, we expected you to do that, now what are you going to do?” That is what we have to face in relation to women and offending.

We have improved on the services and facilities that are out there in our communities, but there is still much more to do. We have to acknowledge that 71 per cent. of female prisoners have no qualifications. Our schools must not fail women in terms of the opportunities that they have when they are young, and our employers must encourage them to obtain those qualifications; otherwise, they will make it more likely that women will fail and face a life that could eventually lead into crime. We know that 65 per cent. of women reoffend on release. Our prisons must reduce that number by offering opportunities in terms of skills, education and family links.

We know that nearly 40 per cent. of women prisoners lose their homes. When people leave prison without a home to go to, they will almost certainly reoffend. It is a tribute to women that the figure is as low as 40 per cent. It is a tribute to their creativity, energy and determination, but it is a disgrace that we do not campaign more effectively and rigorously to enable women and men to have a settled and secure future on leaving prison.

If we want to stop reoffending, we must get rid of the constantly swinging door of choosing between sleeping on a friend’s sofa until the friend is driven crazy and reoffending to get back to some sort of security and a home. We must give people something to fight for. That can be a home.

Lorely Burt: The hon. Lady referred to 40 per cent. of women who lose their homes getting reconvicted. The overall reconviction rate for women in prison is 64 per cent., but only 47 per cent. are reconvicted following community service. Given her comments about the increase in the number of women in prison, does she agree that we should consider more appropriate methods of punishment? I do not say that women should not be punished. If they have done wrong, they must be punished. However, if the effect of the punishment is disproportionate when they leave prison, does she agree that we should consider alternative forms of punishment?

Mrs. Moon: To clarify, I said that 40 per cent. of women lost their home while imprisoned. I shall deal with community service and community punishment later. I hope that we can continue the dialogue then.

The average reading age of prisoners in this country is 11. That is a national disgrace. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South said, when we were in Pakistan, we saw women who were desperate for education. They wanted to learn English and increase their educational opportunities. They recognised that that was the gateway to a future for their families. Women in this country feel the same way. We must focus on people who are struggling with their education, including their literacy, and put more effort into ensuring that no one leaves school with a reading age of 11.

Ms Dari Taylor: Does my hon. Friend accept that the changes that we have witnessed in women’s lives, whether we are considering literacy or confidence, have recently been clearly attached to the introduction of
Sure Start in our communities? Does she perceive Sure Start as another way in which to ensure, through expanding its activities, that the women about whom she speaks so passionately and appropriately benefit?

Mrs. Moon: I endorse my hon. Friend’s comments 100 per cent. I visited my local Sure Start centre in north Cornelly recently to discuss child trust funds. I met very young women, who were first-time, single mothers. They were deeply committed to their child trust funds and their children’s futures. All were contributing additional funds to the trust funds because they wanted their children to have a future. They were determined to work hard to provide it for them. All the women were developing a life plan and making a commitment to what they would do and how they would move away from staying at home with their children, find work and develop their skills base while their children were still young and they had the opportunity of child care and support from the Sure Start centre. They wanted to improve their chances of work once their children were in full-time education. I therefore thank my hon. Friend for her helpful intervention.

We must accept, however, that one of the problems faced by women today is the incredible level of pressure. In trying to fight to move away from our past, and to enter the world as full partners alongside men, many women face a struggle. Rising numbers have mental health problems, especially in the prison population. Seventy per cent. of women prisoners suffer from two or more mental health problems, which is a disgrace. How can we accept that and not pour money into mental health and into diversions that will take women away from a situation that cannot help but exacerbate their mental health problems? Women are five times more likely to self-harm while in prison than men, and women do not self-harm unless they are driven to deep despair. This is a national disgrace: 55 per cent. of all self-harm in prisons is by women, and yet women are only 6 per cent. of the prison population. That is an epidemic, and we must do something about it.

Thirty-seven per cent. of women who are in prison will have made a suicide attempt before they were admitted to prison. We therefore know that a large proportion of women in our prisons are extremely vulnerable and fragile. Prison is not the way to deal with people who have mental health problems and who are fragile and vulnerable. Fifty-five per cent. of women who arrive at prison will test positive for class A drugs. With treatment, we can successfully help women deal with their drug abuse. All too often, however, that treatment is not available.

Prison is particularly damaging for women when it breaks their ties with their families, and especially if it breaks their ties with their children. The relatively small number of women’s prisons and their geographical location mean that the majority of women will serve their sentence away from their family, children and partners, on whom they may have to rely to look after their children. That is not acceptable.

Why are women in prison? Twenty per cent. of women’s prisoners have been through the child care system. Fifty per cent. have reported being victims of childhood abuse or domestic violence. Their lives before entering prison have therefore been chaotic. Are we helping to make their lives less chaotic by taking them into prison? Historically, our prison system has been designed to contain potentially violent male offenders. The system is unsuitable to deal with the problems of vulnerable women, many of whom had lives of abuse before entering the prison system. Half of those women have suffered from domestic violence and one third have suffered from gender and sexual abuse. Our most vulnerable women have therefore spent their lives being neglected as children, beaten as wives and imprisoned as women. The majority are not in prison because they are a danger to others; many are there as a result of petty crime. The commonest offences for which women are sent to prison are theft and handling stolen goods. Sixty-four per cent. of women offenders serve sentences of six months or less, and one third of that 64 per cent. have been sexually abused.

How are we to tackle the emotional, sexual and drug abuse that those women have experienced in their lives? How are we to tackle the illiteracy and restructure the employment opportunities of those serving sentences of six months or less? Would it not be better for usto concentrate on providing the community-based support, punishment and rehabilitation that non-violent offenders who pose very little threat to the wider community are best placed to receive? That would ensure that taxpayers’ money was better spent, it would provide more room in our prisons for those who are a danger to others, and it would enable officers in women’s prisons to focus on high-risk and repeat offenders. Crucially, the vicious circle of drugs, crime and dependency could be squared before those women’s children also become caught up in it.

I know a prison in western Australia called the Boronia Pre-release Centre for Women. Women are given just one opportunity to go to Boronia. Before they go, they are told “If you fail here, you will not be given this opportunity again.” They are allowed to keep their children with them until they reach the age of four, and with their children they live in small units of bungalows. They are offered education, jobs and skills. Hon. Members who visited the prison with me were shocked to discover that one of those skills was the preparation and serving of food, and that so proficient were the women that they provided all the catering facilities for judges on the western Australian circuit. I thought it particularly apt that the judges should be served by women whom they might have sentenced.

At the time when I visited the prison only one woman had reoffended, and I think we should look to it as an exemplar for the service that we could provide. Certainly, if Wales is to have a women’s prison, I hope that it will be based on Boronia.

This is an important debate. It enables us to think carefully about the needs of women in our world, and about how we can improve their lives and equality of opportunity still further. I am proud to be a member of a Labour Government, and I am pleased that the hon. Member for Solihull recognised the steps that the Government have taken to move the agenda forward. I hope the opportunities that we offer in future will mean that fewer vulnerable women take the road of offending and more follow a different path, the path towards secure families and secure jobs. I hope they will be helped to produce a generation that will continue to raise the status of women, and will allow their opportunities to grow and develop even more.