Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'll start my contribution very much where John Griffiths finished his, by agreeing very much with the points that John made in his contribution but also in the, I think, very strong consensus there's been on all sides of the Chamber this afternoon. I will say, Deputy Presiding Officer, that the Welsh Government will be supporting the motion this afternoon. I hope that goes some way towards answering Bethan Sayed's request for a clear policy on this area, and I will say to Members that it's something that I recognise there's a very clear demand for further policy on and I will be seeking to bring a statement to this Chamber on these matters in due course.

I will also say this: I agree with the points that have been made by many Members—I think Julie Morgan made the points very clearly—that the current settlement is a broken settlement; it is not delivering a holistic policy; it demonstrates a constitutional settlement that doesn't work. It's important to recognise that this doesn't work for anyone. It doesn't allow either the Home Office or the Ministry of Justice to deliver their policies easily in Wales, and it doesn't allow us to develop a policy either. So, this is not a settlement that fails to work just for us and the people we serve; it fails to work for the United Kingdom as a whole. And for that reason the settlement, I hope, will be revisited. I don't want to prejudge the issues of the justice commission that will look at many of these issues, but I will say that, as a Minister who is active in this area, we do not have either a policy framework, the powers or the ability to deliver a holistic policy, and unfortunately neither does the United Kingdom Government either, so there is real failure in this area.

Members on all sides of the Chamber outlined very well how many of the services that are required to manage offenders and ex-offenders to promote rehabilitation are themselves devolved but that we do not have the powers required. David Melding's point about Northern Ireland and Scotland, I thought, was a very, very interesting point, and it's certainly one that I would wish to take up in the future.

I will also say that the points made by Jenny Rathbone in her opening speech, which were also reiterated by David Rees, about some of the prison conditions in Wales are very, very well made. I visited Her Majesty's Prison Swansea in February, and I saw for myself the conditions in which too many Welsh men are being held. I've also discussed and highlighted the concerns in the inspection report with Her Majesty's chief inspector of prisons when we met last month, and I have to say that he was very positive in his response to the points I was making and he recognised the very real difficulties facing prisoners on some parts of the Welsh estate. It is absolutely wrong that we have Welsh men held in conditions that are not fit for purpose. Prisoners' partners and children should not have to visit them in institutions that cannot fully respect the human dignity of both prisoners and their families.

I am concerned that we do not have the ability to join up policy in Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service in Wales, and I'm concerned that we do not have the ability to deliver coherent policy responses for people. We have, however, sought to develop a framework to support positive change for those who are at risk of offending in Wales with the probation service. The purpose of the framework is to improve services for those at risk of entering or are already in the criminal justice system. The framework will also promote continued collaboration in order to further reduce the number of offenders entering the criminal justice system, support offenders not to reoffend and keep communities safe.

A number of Members have referred to the Corston report and to female offending. The Corston report, published over a decade ago, argues that equal outcomes for female offenders necessitate a different approach to that for their male counterparts. I agree very much with the points that have been made, particularly by Jenny Rathbone and Julie Morgan, in terms of ensuring that we do not move down the road of simply saying, 'We want a women's prison in Wales', but, actually, what we need is a different sort of facility that performs a different role in a different way, and that's a very different policy, and I recognise the points that have been made. And I think the points that were made regarding female imprisonment, with many women being given summary sentences for offences that, in many cases, would not result in imprisonment for men are well made. Those short-term sentences can have long-term impacts, in many cases leading to a woman losing her tenancy and may result in children being taken into residential care. This results in additional support for devolved services, risking exposure to further adverse childhood experiences for the children of offenders.

I understand that the United Kingdom Government will announce changes to the way in which female offenders are managed, including, potentially, a different secure estate for women. It is previously indicated that there needs to be changes in the wider probation service. I hope that we will be able to ensure that in Wales we are able to take the approach that's been outlined by Members on all sides of the Chamber this afternoon. 

Deputy Presiding Officer, I have had discussions with the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice in relation to female offending and youth justice, and we have agreed that our officials should work together to explore such work to develop proposals on how a different justice system would operate in Wales. I think we do need to begin to answer the question that was put to us by David Rees as to what a Welsh penal policy would begin to look like. The point he made to the First Minister yesterday was well made, and I felt that the First Minister indicated in his response yesterday that he wanted to look at how we would begin to develop a Welsh penal policy.

For me, Deputy Presiding Officer, I would like to see a system predicated on the basis of early intervention and prevention, considering how we can further divert people away from crime in the first place, but where we do have to work with offenders, that we do so in an holistic and rehabilitative way. I agree absolutely with the points made by David Rees on smaller institutions, and certainly, I think, if we are to look at a Welsh penal policy, that the focus should be on rehabilitation, on skills, on training, on enabling people to play a full role in our communities and our society. We understand the need, as David Melding said very clearly, for a punitive element to imprisonment; we recognise that. However, the purpose is then not to pursue that, but to give people the opportunity, then, to play a full role in our society, and that is why I'm proposing that we do enable prisoners who are on short-term sentences to vote in our elections. They will be able to continue to play a part in shaping that policy—those communities. 

We have made our position as a Government on this matter clear in our draft Government and Laws in Wales Bill, and our position has not changed. This Bill provided for the immediate creation of a distinct Welsh legal jurisdiction, with Wales and England sharing judiciary and court services and the devolution of policing civil and criminal law, and the administration of justice from 2026. The UK Government's Bill, which became the Wales Act, failed to respond to our Bill and did not address the crucial issues of jurisdiction and justice, which I think we all believe require urgent attention. The First Minister's established a justice commission, chaired by Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, to undertake a fundamental review of the justice system in Wales and how to strengthen it in the long term.

I would oppose sending anyone to prison unnecessarily. Equally, however, we do need to protect our communities from harm, and prisons clearly have a role to play in that. We cannot pre-empt the conclusions of the justice committee, but we do need to ensure that we do begin the work of developing a justice policy.

Can I say, in closing, Deputy Presiding Officer, a justice policy, for me, is part of our overall approach to safer and cohesive communities? A justice policy that is holistic, that seeks to bring people together and does not seek to simply incarcerate people—it's a justice policy that is based on some of our work on safer communities, and we do need to have a frank and open conversation with UK departments about what a different approach in Wales would involve. We have begun those conversations with the Ministry of Justice, and I look forward to concluding those conversations and the development of a Welsh penal policy that puts the future and cohesion of our communities at its heart.