Shadow Counsel General and Social Justice Minister Mark Isherwood has today questioned the Counsel General over the planned Women’s Residential Centre in Wales and again questioned the Welsh Government decision to locate it in Swansea.
The centre will provide accommodation for vulnerable women with complex needs who would otherwise be sentenced to custody.
When the Welsh Government first announced that it planned to locate the centre near Swansea in South Wales, Mr Isherwood asked the Social Justice Minister how that would ‘help vulnerable women offenders in North, Mid and West Wales to access the services they need closer to home, and to maintain crucial family ties’. He also asked what action was being taken by the Welsh Government to support the location of a future Centre in North Wales.
Given the strong local objections to the centre in Cockett near Swansea, speaking in today’s Plenary meeting, Mr Isherwood again challenged the Counsel General over the chosen location.
He said:
“In your address at the Bevan Foundation’s Summer Social you stated that although the “Welsh Government is working with the UK Ministry of Justice for the establishment of an alternative women’s residential centre in Wales, this has yet to happen”.
“How can you reconcile this with the fact that although it was the UK Government which published a Female Offender Strategy, to divert vulnerable female offenders away from short prison sentences wherever possible, invest in community services and establish five pilot Residential Women’s Centres, including one in Wales, it was the Minister for Social Justice here who subsequently wrote to Members announcing that one of these Centres would be near Swansea in South Wales, and who could not answer how this would help vulnerable women offenders in North, Mid and West Wales to access the services they need closer to home; and, further that Swansea’s Planning Committee subsequently refused this.”
In his response, the Counsel General said “I think there has now been an appeal against that and the inspectorate has now overruled that, so it looks as though that Centre will now actually be proceeding. That's my understanding of the current position” and concluded “Wales has probably the highest level of imprisonment of its citizens in the whole of Europe. That is one of the reasons why we really do think there needs to be a review of justice and the devolution of justice”.
Mr Isherwood added:
“Well, might I suggest, in that context and as we raised in the Committee Inquiry I was party to many years ago, custodial sentencing levels in Wales were higher in Welsh Courts than in English Courts under the same legal system. So, there were questions there which we highlighted 15 years ago. You also referred positively in your presentation to the Bevan Foundation to a pilot drug and alcohol court, funded jointly by Welsh Government and the UK Ministry of Justice, and to a similar pilot under way in North Wales to tackle the issue of private family court hearings as part of a problem-resolving, dispute-resolution approach, which is part of a UK Ministry of Justice pilot.
“However, despite your repeated references to the delivery of social justice by such UK Ministry of Justice programmes, you concluded by describing the devolution of Justice as the way forward. If, as it appears from your repeated public statements, including earlier today, you are basing this upon your perception of different policy approaches by Governments at a particular point in time rather than long-established geographical and operational reality, how can you justify this when, for example: Wales has the highest proportion of children in the UK in care, and one of the highest proportions of children looked after by any State in the World - devolved services; and when, during their visit to HMP Eastwood Park Women's Prison, Members of the Senedd's Equality and Social Justice Committee were told that, when released from the prison to services in Wales, ‘nine out of 10 Welsh inmates go on to reoffend, compared to one in 10 of those from England’?