Baroness Hamwee (LD)

My Lords, this is the last amendment this evening. I am sorry to have to detain noble Lords, but I regard women’s justice as important. I know that the Minister does too, as he chairs the Women’s Justice Board, which is the subject of this amendment. It is quite new and is an important innovation with an impressive membership. I will not detain noble Lords by, as I had intended to do, reading through its purpose as set out in the terms of reference. However, its focus on early intervention and diversion, community solutions, issues specific to pregnant women and mothers with dependent children and reducing the number of young adult women entering the criminal justice system is not something that I have heard expressed before. These are all very important. I am not suggesting that the board is not transparent. Its minutes are online, and the terms of reference include publication of an annual report as well as ad hoc reports. However, publication effectively by the Secretary of State would give its work the weight that it deserves. That is probably the best way of describing it. Even though this is the last amendment, it was one that I thought of early on. We cannot go through a Bill such as this without highlighting the needs of women offenders. We have referred to them, but it has felt a little as if they have been rather an add-on. I will take the time to say that very often women who are offenders are victims before they are offenders: in particular victims of domestic abuse but also victims of circumstances. The MoJ data from 2023 estimated that 10% of cases that result in sentences of 12 months or less are related to domestic violence and, in a further 10% of cases, the offender is flagged by probation for domestic violence—so I am told by Refuge. I should declare an interest there, having a very long time ago chaired Refuge for a very long time. The offences are often small, but they can be persistent. So we, the Liberal Democrats, were very pleased to see the creation of the Women’s Justice Board. It has for a long time been party policy. In fact, I discovered that my noble friend Lord Marks summed up the amendment that went to our party conference, including this. We would like to entrench its position as solidly as possible and give it the appropriate publicity. I beg to move.