PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Incarcerated Pregnant Women and Mothers - 5 November 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)
Debate Detail
Contributions from Liz Saville Roberts, are highlighted with a yellow border.
Liz Saville Roberts
Dwyfor Meirionnydd
Shabana Mahmood
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
We are sending too many women to prison, two thirds of whom are non-violent and over half of whom have dependent children, and 75% of the time the child leaves home after the mother is incarcerated. That is why we have launched the women’s justice board, which will set out its strategy in the spring. Its goal is to reduce the number of women in prison and, ultimately, the number of women’s prisons.
Liz Saville Roberts
All Welsh women in prison are held in England, and being far from home adds to the emotional torture of separation from children, but we cannot assess the extent of the separation without public access to Wales-specific disaggregated data. Will the Secretary of State commit to making this information public so that we can ensure that pregnant women and mothers and children have the proper support they need?
Shabana Mahmood
The data on how we track the experiences of women across England and Wales will be work that the women’s justice board—once it is up and running—will be able to look into and make recommendations on, which we will pick up in the spring.
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