I'm grateful to the Member for Cardiff North for her support, and I know she's been a campaigner on these matters for many years and has driven the debate on many of these issues over a significant period of time.

I want to start by agreeing with the general point that she makes about the prison population. In the 13 months I've been in this post, I've visited every single prison in Wales, and I've taken time to talk, not simply to the staff, although I have done so, and the management of these institutions, but I've also sat in cells talking to the people who are being held there and I've had a number of conversations with people who have described their lives to me in sometimes deeply upsetting detail. And what I've learnt is that we have failed those people as a society, and what I have learnt is that, as a Government, we've made too many speeches and not taken enough actions. And we need—. I'm thinking of somebody I spoke to in Cardiff last summer, who described to me how he had ended up back in Cardiff prison and what his expectations were for his life this autumn that we've spent here. I have to say, I think of him very regularly when I think about the approach that we take to these policies. I think of the conversations I've had with people who have been taken away from their families and where any opportunity they may have to turn their lives around has been made more difficult by public institutions and by public authorities who do not provide, and are not providing, the services in the way that the people we serve require and need. The conversations I've had with these people being held on the secure estate in our name have convinced me that we require far greater and far deeper reform to the penal system than is possible within the current circumstances and within the current settlement. And, when we consider these matters, it is the issue of women and the way in which we fail women that comes back, and I believe will provide the test for all of us, wherever we sit in this Chamber.

The issues around the women's centres I have discussed both with the Minister for female offenders and with the prisons Minister. I last met the prisons Minister about a month ago, and I discussed this matter with him. I believe that we do need at least one women's centre in Wales, and I do take on board the points made by the Conservative spokesperson about location, but also I do not believe that it is right and proper that it is run exclusively by the prison service. I believe that it would be best if it were managed by the Welsh Government to ensure that the focus is on the delivery of services and the focus is on rehabilitation, and not just a punitive experience. So, I believe that we do need to look urgently at not simply the bricks and mortar, but the services that are delivered in that facility and also the management of that facility.

I will also say this: we have focused on a women's centre as opposed to a women's prison and it is right and proper that we do so. But we also need to ensure that we have far greater and more diverse facilities available for women, which aren't simply about custody, but are about the delivery of services so that magistrates and others do have the opportunity to pass sentences that are not always custodial and do provide the opportunity to bring services together to ensure that women and their families are not separated, divided, and broken by a system that should be there to support, to nourish and to sustain those families. 

I will take up the issue that you've raised about the funds available from the Ministry of Justice; that did not form a part of the conversation I had with the prisons Minister last month. But I will say this to the Member for Cardiff North: the values that have driven you, over many years, to campaign on these matters are the values that drive this Government in seeking to address these issues as well.