The following amendments have been selected: amendment 1 in the name of Gareth Bennett, amendment 2 in the name of Darren Millar, and amendment 3 in the name of Rebecca Evans. If amendment 1 is agreed, amendments 2 and 3 will be deselected. If amendment 2 is agreed, amendment will be deselected.

We now move on to item 7, which is the Plaid Cymru debate on prisons and criminal justice. I call on Leanne Wood to move the motion. Leanne. 

Motion NDM6949 Rhun ap Iorwerth

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Notes the report by the Wales Governance Centre, Sentencing and Immediate Custody in Wales: A Factfile.

2. Expresses concern at the report’s finding that Wales has the highest incarceration rate in western Europe, and that women, BAME people and disadvantaged communities are disproportionately impacted by harsher sentencing in Wales.

3. Notes previous research by the Wales Governance Centre which has revealed widespread safety and wellbeing issues in Wales’s prisons, including increasing rates of substance misuse, self-harm, violence and suicide.

4. Notes that a number of young offenders from Wales serve prison sentences in England, and that incarceration has a significant negative impact on young people’s future life chances.

5. Calls for:

a) the full devolution of criminal justice to Wales;

b) the ruling out of the construction of further ‘super prisons’ on any site in Wales and calls on Welsh Government to communicate this opposition to the Ministry of Justice;

c) the full re-unification of the probation service and an end to partial privatisation;

d) a focus on community-based approaches for non-violent crimes and an end to the overuse of shorter prison sentences;

e) an end to custodial sentences for young people and women other than in exceptional circumstances;

f) the right to vote for prisoners in Welsh elections.

Motion moved.

Diolch. I'm pleased to move this motion in Plaid Cymru's name that has followed the publication of a piece of research that deserves serious attention. The finding by the Wales Governance Centre that Wales has the highest incarceration rate in western Europe should be a source of shame for us all. It's also deeply concerning that this trend has developed without detection until the Wales Governance Centre disaggregated the data. These findings and the concerning wider picture that they point to should prompt us to ask some searching questions about what it is we want from our justice system and how it is serving those aims. And that is what I hope that we can start to do today with this debate. 

The truth is that the England and Wales criminal justice system is failing our communities. We have a higher incarceration rate than England, despite having a lower crime rate. Women are more likely to receive an immediate custodial sentence than men. Imprisonment rates among BAME communities are more disproportionate relative to the population in Wales than in England, and Black, Asian and minority ethnic people have the highest average sentence length. So, if you're a person of colour in Wales, you are both more likely to be imprisoned and to receive a longer sentence. White people, however, are underrepresented.

The Llywydd took the Chair.

Looking at rates of imprisonment across Wales, we also know that Wales's most deprived communities have higher rates of incarceration. There is a clear link between poverty and crime and the treatment of working-class offenders by the courts. Inequality is built into the heart of our justice system, whether that's racial, gender, class or geographic inequality, and this is no accident. It is political decisions at Westminster by the Tories and New Labour before them that have got us to this point.

I remember when I served as a probation officer in the mid 1990s, the prison population was half of what it is now. Years later and we have a privatised probation service, a lack of confidence from the courts in community-based responses, coupled with austerity-driven cuts to legal aid and not being able to access justice, and that has all resulted in more people in Wales being sentenced directly to prison.

Added to this, half of all magistrates' courts in England and Wales have closed since 2010. People now have to travel much further to access justice. There is a clear link between austerity, the privatisation of the probation service, the pursuit of profit and poor performance in supervision and monitoring. While community-based solutions have been gutted by successive Governments, they've handed over more and more of the justice system into private hands, with prisons being run for profit by private companies, such as G4S, who have been linked to serious human rights abuses.

Meanwhile, conditions in prisons have deteriorated to crisis point, as previous research by the Wales Governance Centre has revealed. While the number of prisoners held in Wales rose by 23 per cent from 2010-17, the level of recorded self-harm incidents increased by 358 per cent during the same period. In 2017, there were 2,132 self-harm incidents in prisons in Wales. This figure equates to five separate incidents of self-harm taking place in Welsh prisons every day. On average, a prisoner in Wales takes their own life every four months.

Levels of violence are also increasing our prisons. Since 2010, the total number of prisoner-on-prisoner assaults in Wales has increased by 156 per cent, compared to an 86 per cent rise in the number of incidents in English prisons. Assaults on staff and prison disturbances have also increased in England and Wales, and a disproportionate number of disturbances took place in Parc prison, Wales's only private prison.

Our prisons are overcrowded, unsafe and unfit to meet the needs of a modern justice system. The truth is, prison doesn't work, not if our aim is to create a just, fair and safe society, or if we want people to be rehabilitated so they don't keep committing offences over and over again.

At Westminster, the Tories and New Labour before them have taken an approach to justice that is punitive, unfair and focused on generating private profit from criminalisation and human suffering. We could do things differently, and full devolution of the criminal justice system would allow us to do just that. Probation services could be brought back under full public control, alongside establishing a rehabilitative prison system with a specific focus on assisting people and helping them to break the vicious cycle of reoffending through well-resourced, community-based courses and initiatives.

We could also look at wider opportunities to decriminalise activity that doesn't cause harm to our communities. Decriminalisation of drugs and treating substance misuse as a health issue rather than a criminal justice issue would reduce the dangers associated with drug use and ensure that resources aren't wasted on prosecuting people for minor, non-violent offences, such as possession of drugs or shoplifting to feed the family. The criminal justice system could focus on establishing problem-solving justice initiatives that seek to tackle the root causes of offending at an early age, and focus on prevention rather than retribution after the crime has been committed. In particular, custodial sentences would only be used for women and young people in the most exceptional circumstances. For both of these groups of people, more often than not, a custodial sentence only makes things worse, and the same, of course, goes for people with mental health conditions.

Our current focus on punishing people gets us nowhere, leading only to more families being torn apart, cycles of reoffending, substance misuse, unemployment, homelessness and mental health problems. Focusing on full rehabilitation, restorative justice approaches and trauma-informed work with offenders would help us create safer communities. And that's why Plaid Cymru is also in favour of giving prisoners the right to vote, in the interests of human rights and rehabilitation. Disenfranchising an entire section of the population in this way cannot be justified, in my view, in a modern democracy. And what a strong signal Wales could send about our determination to fully rehabilitate prisoners as citizens this motion would send. 

Turning to the amendments to this motion, I'd first like to address the amendment by the far-right fearmongers UKIP, whose amendment tries to link ethnic origin or nationality to criminality. What a disgraceful thing to do. This is another pathetic attempt by UKIP to turn people against migrants, and I would urge everyone to vote against that.

We'll also be voting against the Conservative amendment, which seems to be an attempt by them to stick their heads in the sand about the disastrous effects of their party's austerity and privatisation. Warm words by the Ministry of Justice about a focus on rehabilitation must be backed by significant action to be meaningful, and, so far, the record is not good.

I'm pleased that the Welsh Government have today supported our calls for a fairer justice system that works. I've been disappointed recently, however, to hear the new First Minister say that he's not in favour of the full devolution of justice to Wales, and instead favours a more piecemeal approach. I would ask him, if he agrees with what we are calling for, from focusing on rehabilitation to ending private profits from prisons, then why wait?

I look forward to seeing the outcome of the work by the Commission on Justice in Wales considering this issue, but there is already a broad consensus across this Siambr and in the general public that criminal justice should be devolved to Wales. So, I would encourage the Welsh Government to support our motion today and make it clear that they are in favour of full devolution. Let's demand the tools to do things ourselves and to build a better system. Devolving responsibility for criminal justice would enable us to forge our own path in Wales. Rather than topping the league for imprisonment and the poverty and misery associated with it, we could create a fairer, transformative system that would be a beacon for justice around the world. What's stopping us?

I've selected the three amendments to the motion. If amendment 1 is agreed, amendments 2 and 3 will be deselected. If amendment 2 is agreed, amendment 3 will be deselected. I call on Gareth Bennett to move amendment 1, tabled in his name. Gareth Bennett.

Amendment 1—Gareth Bennett

Delete all and replace with:

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales: 

1. Notes the Wales Governance Centre report on Sentencing and Immediate Custody, Imprisonment in Wales and supplementary evidence to the Welsh Affairs Select Committee. 

2. Further notes that, according to the Ministry of Justice, in October 2018, 11 percent of the total prison population in England and Wales were foreign nationals, with the most common foreign nationalities being Polish, Albanian, Irish and Romanian. 

3. Believes that:

a) the prison service should be adequately funded and prison officers adequately paid;

b) all prisoners should be in the custody of officers of the Crown answerable to UK Government Ministers and not private companies;

c) the Welsh Government should work with the UK Government to reverse privatisation of the prison system;

d) foreign criminals should be deported to serve their sentences in their own countries, and such criminals should be banned from re-entering the UK;

e) new prisons should be built as necessary throughout the UK to accommodate the number of persons convicted of imprisonable crimes.

Amendment 1 moved.

Diolch, Llywydd, and thanks to Plaid Cymru for bringing today's debate. This isn't, I would have to add, a debate that is particularly welcomed by us here on the UKIP side of the Chamber, since our view is that criminal justice is rightly a matter for the UK Government. We don't really go along with the aspirations of Plaid Cymru that criminal justice should be a devolved issue. It seems that the Welsh Labour Government are creeping by inches towards Plaid Cymru's position, so we find that we in UKIP are increasingly in opposition to Labour over many criminal justice issues as well. 

Perhaps I should start on areas where we do agree. UKIP doesn't see any role for private contractors working in the criminal justice sector. We think that this is necessarily a role for the state, and we would like good terms and conditions for people working in the prison system to ensure that high standards are maintained. High rates of suicide, violence and self-harm among the prison population clearly are no good thing, and we also have to take account of the increasing rates of assaults by prisoners against the prison officers.

There can be a problem with short custodial sentences. To be fair, we had evidence to this effect on the communities committee last year, when we did our homelessness inquiry. Some prisoners on short sentences go into homelessness almost by default once they are released because the housing authorities haven't had any time to put any tenancy in place for them, so the released prisoner can fall into a cycle of prison and homelessness and possibly end up back in jail for reoffending after only a short time. So, there are issues over the use of short sentences.

The problem with this is that serial offenders are not really appropriate for community sentences, since their track record suggests that they will in all probability reoffend, meaning that we will then have more victims of crime. And there is a problem that only two thirds of community sentences in England and Wales are actually completed. We have a problem with having enough probation officers to run the community sentences properly, so you can't just have a blanket assertion that we have to rule out short sentences. Sometimes, offenders have to be given a short sentence because there is no viable alternative.

There is an issue of overcrowding in jails as the prison population has risen substantially in recent years. Plaid Cymru and Labour don't seem to want more prisons to be built; this seems to be their position, although they say that it is superprisons that they are specifically against and not prisons per se. I think that, in truth, neither Labour nor Plaid like the idea of us having prisons at all. One of the causes of overcrowding in jails is the rising population in England and Wales generally—

Will you take an intervention?

—I'm not taking any interventions, thank you—partly caused, of course, by mass immigration, and, of course, because the Home Office no longer has much choice over who can actually come and settle in the country, many foreign criminals, particularly from eastern Europe, have taken the chance to settle here and carry on with their criminal careers in the UK. So, we have the figure that 11 per cent of all prisoners in England and Wales are now foreign nationals.

Will you take an intervention?

No, I'm not taking any, Rhun. Thanks very much. Of course—

Racist.

[Inaudible.]—you're probably just scared of an argument.

Racist.

Of course, we can try to deport these people—

Racist.

—but we are up against court challenges, and really we won't be able to get rid of the large foreign element in our jails—

Racist.

—until we are out of the European Union and the European Court of Justice, and preferably also out of the European Court of Human Rights.

Labour and Plaid are both committing themselves today to prisoner voting. This seems a bit odd, since we are having an inquiry on precisely this subject on the communities committee at the moment, but we have only just got into this inquiry, so why Labour are already committing themselves to a position on this, I don't know. Of course, I wait to hear what the Labour spokesman says, but it does seem that the Government may be holding the committee a little bit in contempt here. We do have a distinguished new member of the committee in Carwyn Jones, who, until a few weeks ago, was the First Minister, and he seems to be genuinely interested in this inquiry and genuinely to be undertaking it without a preconceived view. Is he not allowed to have a meaningful view on this issue because the Labour Government are already staking out a position on this? But, as I say, I look forward to hearing how the Labour Minister expounds their view on this matter today.

To summarise the UKIP position, we oppose the Plaid motion, we oppose the Labour amendments, we don't really like the Conservative amendment a lot, since they're only focusing on rehabilitation and community sentences and nothing else, which doesn't really give a holistic or practical solution to the problems facing us here, so we will abstain today on the Conservative amendment. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

I call Mark Isherwood to move amendment 2, tabled in the name of Darren Millar—Mark Isherwood.

Amendment 2—Darren Millar

Delete all after point 1 and replace with:

Notes the focus by the Ministry of Justice on rehabilitative services, community sentences and reducing reoffending.

Amendment 2 moved.

Diolch, Llywydd. As we've heard, the Wales Governance Centre's report, 'Sentencing and Immediate Custody in Wales' found that Wales has the highest rate of imprisonment in western Europe and that, although the total number of prison sentences rose in Wales between 2010 and 2017, they fell by 16 per cent in England. The report's authors stated that wider research is needed to explain Wales's high rate of imprisonment, and this is particularly relevant given that many of the services required to manage offenders and ex-offenders and promote rehabilitation are already devolved. Such a difference in delivery within what is a shared criminal justice system provides yet another reason why the calls for devolution of criminal justice should not be answered. These calls also continue to fail to acknowledge that criminal activity does not recognise national or regional boundaries and that 40 per cent of people in Wales live within 25 miles of the border with England and 90 per cent within 50 miles. As the former First Minister has also pointed out, dangerous offenders could still be sent across the UK after devolution to address the lack of category A prisons in Wales. Reading Plaid Cymru's virtual reality motion, you wouldn't know that the UK Ministry of Justice was focused on rehabilitative services, community sentences and reducing reoffending in England and Wales. I therefore move amendment 2.

The UK Government has consistently stated that the proportion of prisoners who reoffend on release in England and Wales is too high. Last August, I attended an event held in Wrexham by HM Prison and Probation Service in Wales to discuss the 'Strengthening probation, building confidence' paper, under which all offender management services in Wales will sit within the National Probation Service from 2020. HM Prison and Probation Service in Wales will explore options for commissioning rehabilitative services such as interventions and community payback. They will build upon the unique arrangements they already have in Wales through their established prisons and probation directorate and upon successful existing local partnerships, better reflecting the devolved responsibilities of the Welsh Government.

The UK Government's prison reforms are not about increasing capacity but about replacing ageing and ineffective prisons with buildings fit for today's demands. Superprisons are not a one-size-fits-all model. Berwyn prison Wrexham is the first custodial facility in England and Wales to be designated a rehabilitation prison. It is a training and resettlement prison divided into three houses, each divided into eight communities, plus a care and support unit. Following his recent visit to Berwyn, Labour's Wrexham MP said he was very pleased that there were constructive signs for the future.

Sentencing guidelines already state—[Interruption.]—already state that custodial sentences will only be imposed on young offenders in the most serious cases. The UK Government has already rejected community prisons for women in England and Wales and they will instead trial five residential centres to help women offenders with issues such as finding work and drug rehabilitation in the community. The Ministry of Justice is also already working on banning short prison sentences in England and Wales, with Ministers stating that short jail terms are less effective at cutting reoffending than community penalties, where such sentences were long enough to damage and not long enough to heal.

Plaid Cymru's call, echoed by Labour Ministers, for prisoners to have a right to vote in Welsh elections is not mentioned in either of their 2016 manifestos. The Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee are currently undertaking an inquiry into voting rights for prisoners, and any support for today's motion will be pre-empting our findings. In the committee's online discussion, only 24 per cent thought that all prisoners should be allowed to vote. In a 2017 YouGov survey, only 9 per cent of people in Wales said all prisoners should be allowed to vote. Not voting is just one of the facts of life arising from being in prison, reflecting a decision by the community that the person concerned is not suitable to participate in the decision-making processes of a community.

Our priority must be the human rights of victims that are violated by murderers, terrorists, rapists and paedophiles. The European Court of Human Rights did not rule that all prisoners should be given voting rights, and a UK Government compromise on this has already been accepted. Any consideration beyond this should focus on the case for allowing prisoners to vote as part of their rehabilitation in preparation for re-entering broader society. Instead of the top-down model proposed by this motion, continuous attention should be given to what works and what we need to do differently in order to design the system backwards. Diolch yn fawr.

I call on the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip to move formally amendment 3, tabled in the name of Rebecca Evans.

Amendment 3—Rebecca Evans

Delete point 5 and replace with:

Welcomes the work of the Commission on Justice in Wales and looks forward to its recommendations about future responsibilities for policing and justice in Wales.

Calls for

a) the ruling out of the construction of further ‘super prisons’ on any site in Wales and calls on Welsh Government to communicate this opposition to the Ministry of Justice;

b) the full re-unification of the probation service and an end to partial privatisation;

c) a focus on community-based approaches for non-violent crimes and an end to the overuse of shorter prison sentences;

d) an end to custodial sentences for young people and women other than in exceptional circumstances; and

e) the right to vote for prisoners in Welsh elections.

Amendment 3 moved.

Formally.

Diolch. Bethan Sayed.

Thanks. I think it's really important that we keep this particular issue at the top of the political agenda and try and discuss this in a constructive way if it's possible—not from what I've heard from some contributions today. One of the things I was most keen to talk about and to put on the agenda when we had the campaign in Port Talbot against a new superprison in Baglan was that the campaign should simply not be about 'In my backyard'. The issue of a prison raised much larger issues of importance to Wales and those needed to be explored and discussed in a constructive way. The proposed prison was about much more than simply housing prisoners, and the arguments surrounding a prison as some form of economic investment always lacked credibility, especially when the land was already designated as a business park and should, in my view, have been developed as such years ago.

What the proposed prison in Port Talbot was truly about, in my view, was a Westminster Government that had failed to invest in Wales, had cancelled major infrastructure projects or failed to back others. It was another example of a Westminster Government that believed that Wales, having a flatlining economy, would jump at the chance to host anything with even a mild prospect of investment, regardless of what that investment was or the implications of it. We deserve better than that now and we did so then when the campaign was at its height. I must say, too, that the Welsh Government did, at the beginning, jump at the prospect of a prison; I remember the words of Carwyn Jones when he was First Minister. So, I am very pleased that the backbench Member now, but Minister at the time, Alun Davies was changing his mind on that and putting forward some very progressive ideas.

What this prison was about for us, and what it became about for many involved in the prison campaign was a conversation about our future and how we deal with the wider issues surrounding criminal justice. Is it right that the fate of Welsh prisoners is decided by a Minister in England? Is it right that, despite 20 years of devolution and an increasing body of Welsh law, we don't have a say over this huge, increasingly important aspect of policy? Is it right that Wales's prisoners are sent to English prisons and England's prisoners are kept here in Wales? And, of course, the wider question: why do we keep going down the road of mass incarceration instead of having a conversation about why we send people to prison in the first place, who actually needs to be in prison and how we need to focus on their rehabilitative needs? We had many of those discussions as part of the campaign in Port Talbot and we showed that, contrary to what some people may think, there is not as widespread a view as that which UKIP espouses—the throw-away-the-key attitude that some people may have. Do people believe that those convicted of a crime should pay penance? Yes. And we believe that too; we don't believe in having no prisons—that would be entirely absurd. But there is also true understanding and an eagerness to ensure that those convicted of less serious crimes are given a chance to turn their lives around and rectify their mistakes in a decent way.

We have to be wary, though, that the Ministry of Justice is still exploring the possibility of a new superprison in south Wales. The argument stands, as it did in Port Talbot, that we do not need another prison in south Wales. And I think the Ministry of Justice actually does itself a disservice in how it perceives Welsh politicians, because just by moving to another area of south Wales doesn't mean that we're not going to campaign, it doesn't mean that they're going to not face local opposition; we will take that campaign to that community, wherever it is, whether I represent that area or not, because we do not want that prison here in Wales. So, I hope that the Ministry of Justice takes note of that.

I believe that the UK Government position on this is predicated on the notion of more of the same. They hold a position that doesn't take reform seriously, seeks to deliver justice and rehabilitation on the cheap, locking people up in large prisons without enough resources, and they do that because the staff there have told us. Whistleblowers have come to us and said that that is what is happening. Under those circumstances, it's no wonder that the MoJ are looking to build more prisons.

So, we take a different view, as Leanne Wood has mentioned earlier, and argue strongly that, by refocusing how we treat convicted people, by overhauling sentencing laws and penal policy and by renationalising and reprioritising probation and rehabilitation, then we can cut and reduce the demand for prison places. Now, I don't have much time left, but what I would like to end on is trying to, perhaps, re-understand what this meaningful conversation with the MoJ actually means. I didn't understand it under the other Minister and I still don't understand what it means. We need clarification on—if the policy is not to have more prisons here in Wales, when and what those meaningful conversations with the MoJ will be to change your mind. What will it take for the Welsh Government to change your mind on some of these key issues of principle in relation to what we want to do with the future of our criminal justice system? If I get that clarity here today, I will be very pleased indeed, but I am thankful that we are continuing this debate and that we can address some of these issues, hopefully, in a progressive way.

I agree with much of what Leanne has said in terms of the current state of the prison system being a source of shame, as well as the fact that more people in Wales are incarcerated than any other group of citizens across the whole of Europe, but there are some serious questions that need to be asked in understanding why that is. How much of that, these harsher sentences, is to do with the fact that English judges are coming to Wales and handing down longer and more severe sentences than they do to people convicted for the same offence in England? I'm unable to answer that question, but it's a serious one that we have to ask, and that obviously feeds into the arguments as to why we might need—why we do need—a criminal justice system devolved to Wales. Is it, alternatively, because of greater levels of deprivation in Wales that therefore increase the number of people who are turning to stealing and robbing and committing violent offences as an alternative to holding down a job? Or are the Welsh police better at detecting crime and apprehending individuals who are breaking the law?

Will you take an intervention? I just might be able to help you with some of the questions that you're asking there, because I recently met with some representatives of Napo, my former trade union, the National Association of Probation Officers, and they were telling my that clearly what's happening is: the fact that the probation service has been partly privatised has meant that that that privatised element of the probation service now doesn't have the confidence of the courts. So, instead of being able to recommend sentences that we used to call community service, now called 'unpaid work', or group work—I used to run anger management groups or drink drive groups, for example—probation officers are not making those recommendations now, because they don't have faith in the system. And what is more likely to be happening is then people are either fined, or they have to go to prison, and more people are going to prison, in their view. That's the explanation that they give me for this higher incarceration rate in Wales. 

Okay. Well, I'm sure that that's a very important reflection, but it wouldn't explain why more people are going to prison in Wales than in England, because you have the privatised probation service in England too. My understanding is it is across the piece, but if you know something more than that, obviously you can come back. Anyway, I think these are the sorts of things we want the commission for justice to answer, and, at the moment, they are not going to report until the end of this year. So, I don't think we can second guess what they're going to say. 

There's a great deal wrong, and clearly the levels of recidivism are an absolute disaster. It costs more to put somebody in prison than it does to put them up in Claridge's or somewhere like that, and yet we should hardly be surprised. The overcrowded conditions breed self-harm, suicide, assault and desperation. That's something that we have to recognise. We also have to acknowledge that some good work is going on to try and reduce the level of self-harm, including suicide, through the one-to-one conversations on a regular basis between prisoners and a designated officer that we heard about, both in Parc in Bridgend, as well as, I heard about, in Cardiff prison, when I visited last week. It is clear that if the prisoner feels that they are having their grievances heard, they are less likely to resort to really unproductive ways of expressing that frustration. So, I think we should commend the prison service for instituting that sort of thing.

I would also like to commend the work by the Prison Advice and Care Trust in Cardiff prison, which is to make the cafe, the area where prisoners meet their families, much more friendly and a pleasanter place to be, which is both beneficial to the families and beneficial to the prisoner. We know that recidivism is far, far reduced if prisoners maintain contact with their families. But I think that the sort of responses that we heard from Mark Isherwood are just the sort of problem that we have with a sensible debate about the criminal justice system, which is driven by the Daily Mail. We cannot go on like this. We cannot send people to prison if we are, at the same time, not being able to ensure that the law is being enforced in prison. It is completely unacceptable that prisoners have had their belongings stolen whilst they are being transferred from one prison to another. That is against the law, and the law should be upheld, both in prisons—.

I think that one of the greatest arguments in favour of enfranchising prisoners is it forces politicians who make the decisions about the system have a much greater awareness of what goes on in prisons and the ways in which we need to fix it to make it a less grossly expensive operation that doesn't actually produce the result that we want, which is to reduce the numbers of people who are returning to crime on release. So, I think it's premature to be voting at this moment on how, on when, prisoners should get the vote, because the local government committee is in the middle of an inquiry on this important matter. But we are where we are, we have the debate that we're having, and I think it's one we need to continue.

I want to highlight in my contribution this afternoon three particular aspects of the effects of the current system on those currently incarcerated and the consequences. I want to first of all look at the services that are provided—or not provided—for prisoners who speak Welsh. Members of the Chamber will have seen the Welsh Language Commissioner's report, 'Cymraeg yn y carchar', Welsh in prisons. It was a very thorough piece of work, and it was very disturbing. She was able to highlight that provision is not consistently made. She even found that there were instances of prisoners being told not to speak Welsh to their families, and I have personally come across situations where mothers have been told not to speak Welsh to their Welsh-speaking children when those children do not speak English because they're so small. That is a clear breach of those prisoners' human rights. It is more important, indeed, particularly, as the commissioner highlights, because so many of our prisoners have learning difficulties, they may have low levels of education, they may have disabilities, and many of them have mental health issues.

It's clear from this report's findings that the provision currently available to Welsh speakers is inadequate and inconsistent, and when it comes to women prisoners, who are all incarcerated beyond Wales, often absolutely non-existent. This has to be addressed, and it is, of course, the legal responsibility of the Minister of justice and the UK Government to address this. It is clear from the commissioner's report that they are failing to do so.

Presiding Officer, I just simply don't believe that however much individuals working in the system—and the commissioner does highlight some good practice, it has to be said—try to meet the needs of these prisoners, they are ever going to do it, and instead of trying to fix a broken system under Westminster control, this is a strong argument for me that the criminal justice system needs to be controlled by those politicians who Welsh-speaking people and their families elect, and that, of course, is us. We need to devolve the system.

I want to build a little on the points that my colleague Leanne Wood has already made about women prisoners. To begin with, I think we need to address the question as to why women are so routinely incarcerated for offences for which men would be given community penalties. I think we know the answer to that, and I think we know that offending behaviour is perceived by many, when it is done by women, as more transgressive. It is based on sex discrimination, on sexist assumptions about what is acceptable behaviour from women. You know, 'Boys will be boys', they get into a fight, they'll get a community penalty. Girls get into a fight, 'That's outrageous; that's completely transgressive', and they are likely to end up with custodial sentences. And in addressing the problems around women's treatment in the system, we have to base it on that understanding of sex discrimination.

We know that there were 227 women from Wales in September 2017—the most recent figures I could get—who were serving custodial sentences in English prisons. Most of those women are mothers. So, that is at least 200 Welsh families a very long way away from their mothers, and we know that the effects on children and families of incarcerating women can be devastating.

Also, we know it doesn't work. We also know that women end up going back into custody, again, very often, for non-payment of fines, and this has got to stop. We need to look and we need to examine the attitudes within the system that are leading to women being incarcerated when men were not. We need some facilities for women prisoners here in Wales, close to their families. We know that that's absolutely crucial in terms of their likelihood to be able to rehabilitate and reintegrate successfully into society. I think we need to debate whether we need a small, secure unit—whether we need a small women's prison here in Wales for those offenders who really cannot be supported in the community. But the vast majority of our women prisoners should not be in prison at all, and they should be helped, not punished.

Lastly, Presiding Officer, I want to talk very briefly about the youth justice system. We've discussed this in this Chamber on a number of occasions. I want to talk from a very personal perspective, because the Deputy Minister for Health and Social Services will remember a time when I was actively engaged in this field, running a youth justice project for Barnardo's. All the young people we worked with—and they were mostly young men—would have gone into custody had they not come to us. And one of the things that I want to put to bed is the idea that community penalties are soft. They are not. On a number of occasions when I was working with young men, for example, confronting them with the victims of their offences, they asked me to breach them and send them into custody, because they knew how to do custody. Custody was relatively easy. Facing up to what they'd done wrong and making amends for it was much, much more challenging.

Now, that was a very thoroughly researched project, funded by Barnardo's, researched by universities. Only one in 10 of those young people reoffended at all, and those who did reoffended much less seriously. It was expensive, but it was a lot cheaper than incarcerating them. We have known, Presiding Officer, for 25 years that young offenders are usually young offenders because they are young people in trouble, and once again we need to intervene in their lives in a way that supports them. Because I know from personal experience—and I can see those young people's faces today—that if we intervene in a manner that supports them, we can not only change their lives for the better, but we can prevent them from reoffending. We need a Welsh approach to dealing with our very, very troubled young people, and we need, again, to make those decisions here.

I think we all share some gratitude to the Wales Governance Centre for the work they're doing in the reports and analysis that they've published, but also in publishing Welsh stats and an understanding of the secure estate, and how the prison and probation service works and serves Wales. Taken together, all of this work is describing a failing system. The system is failing, and it is our job here today and here in this place to fix that. We have to ask the fundamental question: why is this system failing and why is it failing so consistently and over time? My answer to that question is that it's because we have a broken settlement. Until the settlement is fixed, we are unable to solve the problems that are endemic in the criminal justice system.

The England and Wales jurisdiction is a relic of history. That is what the Welsh Government says in its evidence to the Thomas Commission on Justice in Wales. It describes how the system—the final legacy of the Acts of Union, the Tudor Acts of Union—how it today creates a system that is failing people in Wales. The Welsh Government was very clear, in the evidence that I gave to the Thomas commission, the evidence that the former First Minister gave to the commission, and the evidence that the Counsel General, who is in his place today, gave to the commission—that the system is failing Wales, it's failing the people of Wales, and that the criminal justice system must be devolved to Wales. We were very clear about that.

We need to understand the real implications of this. If a jurisdiction, and if policy over criminal justice, was simply some sort of dusty, academic subject, I frankly wouldn't be that interested in the devolution of it. It's because of its human impact on people today that I've been persuaded that this is not simply a matter that is important, but a matter that is urgent. [Interruption.] I will give way.

I'm grateful to Alun Davies. Can I, just for a question of clarity, be clear that we're talking here about the whole of the criminal justice system?

Yes. I don't think I qualified my words in any way at all. Certainly the Welsh Government hasn't qualified its words at all. What the Welsh Government has said is that this has to be done as part of a process. It's not qualified its support for the devolution of the criminal justice system.

We need to devolve and then unite the policy area. We need to ensure that we have a secure estate, we have the support in social services, and we're able to deliver a holistic approach to criminal justice, and we can't do that at the moment. This is probably the only area of policy where neither the Welsh Government nor the UK Government is able to deliver its policy ambitions in Wales. It's a real achievement for both Governments to fail to deliver their policy objectives.

I did regret the tone and content of the speech from the Conservative spokesperson in this debate this afternoon. I will say to him that the conversations that I had with Ministry of Justice and Home Office Ministers were far more constructive than perhaps he's been briefed about. The Ministers in London—in Westminster—are very aware of the failings of the system in Wales and aware of the reasons for the failings of this system.

Did you not hear me devote the majority of my speech to listing the initiatives launched by the Ministry of Justice over recent years to reflect that very finding, not just in Wales but in England too?

They have launched a number of initiatives over a number of years, but they recognise that they can't deliver their policy objectives through those initiatives in Wales because we don't have a settlement that enables them to do so. They're very aware that their objectives simply can't be reached under the current settlement—they're very aware of that.

So, we need, then, to design a system that meets Welsh needs. We need to ensure that mental health and substance abuse are a part of what we do across the whole of the criminal justice system. We need to address the appalling situation facing women and young people, but we do also need to address the estate for men as well. The estate as it currently stands is simply not fit for purpose, and we need to understand that we do need investment in the whole of the estate. We do need to create small local prisons with rehabilitation and rebuilding lives at their heart. We need to ensure that the decisions that are taken today on probation are taken forward in future. 

But none of this is possible without the devolution of the system. I regret that the Government has sought to amend the Plaid Cymru motion this afternoon—I believe that it's an error of judgment. The Government would have been better off supporting the Plaid Cymru motion. I'd be interested to hear the Minister's explanation as to why she's seeking to amend the motion today. I'll be very clear as well: I'm not minded to support the Government's amendment today, because I believe it does bring equivocation into an area where the Government has been very clear.

I'll finish by saying this:

'All candidates for the First Minister role are in agreement that justice should be devolved. This is the view of the Labour group in the National Assembly. My colleagues share the same views as me.'

That is Carwyn Jones, as First Minister of Wales, giving evidence to the justice commission in November of last year. I hope the Minister will be as unequivocal in her response this afternoon, because we are failing people today and we are failing people tomorrow. Unless we are prepared to take the difficult decisions and invest in the people of this country in the criminal justice system, we will also be guilty of the same failures that the Conservative Government in London are presiding over. I don't wish to be a part of that. As a Minister in this Government, I sought to take a radical approach to delivering social justice for everybody. We cannot deliver social justice unless we support the devolution of the criminal justice system and we invest in the people who are part of that system. 

I call on the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip—Jane Hutt.

Diolch, Llywydd. I do welcome the debate on these very important issues. The publication of the Wales Governance Centre report, 'Sentencing and Immediate Custody in Wales', is very timely, building on their earlier report, published in the summer of last year, specifically 'Imprisonment in Wales: A Factfile'. The findings of this report from the governance centre will, of course, assist us in further establishing a clearer picture of the criminal justice system in Wales.

The report has also further highlighted the importance of needing Wales-specific data in understanding justice policy and practice. I discussed that with Dr Robert Jones when I met him following the publication of his report. I commended them—the centre and Robert Jones—for their work and for the ongoing engagement that the governance centre has with the Welsh Government. I took the opportunity also to say I valued the briefing on the important work he's been undertaking, including a briefing for me on the research they're undertaking for the justice commission.

I'd like to comment on the wide range of policy points raised in the motion today. I, too, see the need for a different sort of criminal justice system in Wales that's rooted in rehabilitation and the community, as the motion indicates and as has been expressed today in this Chamber. We need to gain a better understanding of why people end up in prison and what we could do to prevent them from going to prison, often for short sentences, which, as has been said, can have a devastating impact on their lives and the lives of their families and communities.

We recognise the need to protect our communities from harm and where we cannot divert people away from crime in the first place, we must ensure that all we do is in a holistic and rehabilitative way. We don't believe that building more prison places is the right way to solve the crisis in our criminal justice system. There's clearly a distinction between wanting to take a different approach to improving facilities and wanting to build additional facilities. We want an improvement in the standard and condition of the existing secure estate. We do not want an increase in the number of prisons or prison places in Wales.

Services, of course, don't end at the prison gate when an individual leaves prison, as the First Minister stated in Plenary last week. This Government is fully supportive of the reunification of the probation service in Wales. There are welcome steps being taken in relation to the probation service in Wales, but we must go further. This is our chance to shape the future direction of probation services, which need to be flexible and innovative in their approach to meeting the needs of individuals, helping them achieve best outcomes and maintaining stability within their communities. Leanne Wood would be, I'm sure, pleased to hear that I'm meeting Napo tomorrow to discuss these issues, because they are so relevant and key, and this debate is, as I said, very timely. 

Only by ensuring that the correct level of support post release can be provided—including appropriate housing, health and social services provision, and encouragement to access education and skills to maximize job opportunities—can we begin to address the issue of the revolving door occurrence of people regularly returning to prison. So, I'd encourage and support any proposals to end or limit the use of short-term sentences. Costly process serves little if no purpose in terms of rehabilitation, but, as I said, can have a devastating impact on people's lives. 

Turning to other policy issues in the motion—the right to vote for prisoners in Welsh elections. The Minister for Housing and Local Government is exploring options for extending the rights of prisoners to vote in Welsh local government elections and we've consulted on a package of proposals in terms of electoral reform with a view to bringing forward a Bill later this year. But of course, the Assembly's Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee, chaired by John Griffiths, is undertaking an inquiry on this very issue of voting rights for prisoners. I'm pleased the terms of reference include considering whether some or all prisoners should be given the right to vote in Welsh elections or whether distinctions might be drawn between different categories of prisoner. So, the Welsh Government supports the principle of the right to vote for prisoners but awaits the committee's findings. 

I want to make a strong point as well about women and the criminal justice system. I was also appalled by the statistics—and Helen Mary as well as Alun Davies and others on this point. I strongly endorse the principle set out and many of you will remember Baroness Jean Corston's seminal report on this issue. More than 10 years on, these principles that she outlined remain the same. It's clear that women are being sent to prison often for low-level, summary offences. Thank you for your insights today on this issue.

Consequently, the use of ineffective short-term prison sentences on women who have not committed serious offences can have a catastrophic impact on them and their families. Short sentences don't enable rehabilitation in its fullest sense, because, obviously, they're often not in prison long enough to be able to even complete or access programmes that could be beneficial in terms of education and rehabilitation.

At the same time, the children of women serving a custodial sentence will in turn suffer. As the Prison Reform Trust report, 'What about me?', published last year states, only 5 per cent of children whose mothers are in prison are able to stay within the family home. The longer-term impacts of the imprisonment of women are far reaching and must be considered seriously. Any proposal to reduce the impact of incarceration on women should therefore be welcomed.

I'd also like to thank Alun Davies, my predecessor, for the work that he undertook in this key area of policy, and the commitment he made to address these issues across the full range of aspects arising within this debate, and widely welcomed. We need to ensure that, as far as Welsh women are concerned, they have safe and secure facilities that are fit for purpose, and I do look forward to, obviously, moving the female offending blueprint for Wales. Alun announced it last year in December. It was developed jointly with Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service, and that will help identify the additional support required for the delivery of appropriate justice system services for women in Wales.

So, I think it's important, Llywydd, to say that in setting out his immediate priorities for reform—and he did that in his first First Minister's questions—the First Minister identified those immediate priorities that youth justice and female offending are areas we are working on with the Ministry of Justice, through the blueprints announced in December, to see what progress can be made within the constraints of the existing devolution settlement. The Welsh Government didn't establish the commission to ratify its own view; it is independent and it has heavyweight expertise from across all the areas it's investigating. Our amendment was laid in order to recognise the important work of the Thomas commission, and, of course, we all across this Chamber look forward to the conclusions and recommendations that it will provide.   

Will you take an intervention? 

Rhun. 

Thank you very much for taking an intervention, and it's to add to comments made by the Member for Blaenau Gwent sitting behind you, really. If it is genuinely a political ambition of yours to move towards the full devolution of the criminal justice system, no, you're not proposing to do it in a way that satisfies us in terms of the pace of change, but why not at this late stage decide to back our motion as it stands in order to show that there is unity here on the direction of travel, and where we want to get to in the end?   

Well, I think the purpose of our amendment was wholly, I think, positive and constructive in recognising that it will inform the direction of travel, which I think we share; we've supported so many points of your motion. But can I just say, Rhun, in terms of the commission, as Alun Davies said, we submitted a considerable body of evidence—Alun formed part of the ministerial team—we produced an overview evidence paper and, of course, it's supplemented by other papers, and we got to look at the whole range—family justice, the legal sector, jurisdiction. This is covering all those points, and also victim and offender education and employment—a whole range of evidence. 

I'm grateful to you. The evidence was very clear that the Welsh Government proposed to the Thomas commission. It considered the jurisdiction to be a relic of past times and an impediment to the delivery of social justice in this country today. Will you now state unequivocally that you stand by that evidence—the evidence of the Counsel General, the evidence I gave as a Cabinet Secretary, the evidence of the former First Minister? I have to say—I repeat—the amendment from the Government was an error of judgment. We support as a party and as a group the delivery of the devolution of the criminal justice system. I don't understand why the Government seeks to remove that single sentence from the motion this afternoon. Will you state unequivocally that you support the devolution of criminal justice? 

Well, I think, Alun, as I repeated the weight and breadth of the evidence that you gave as part of that team that gave that evidence, with the Counsel General and the former First Minister—of course, this Welsh Government stands by that evidence that you gave. I give you my commitment to that, but, of course, I do think we have to look at the justice commission. Our amendment was to be constructive and helpful to move us forward, because the issues raised by the Plaid motion are crucial, but they form part, I believe, of a wider picture that Lord Thomas was looking for. 

So, in conclusion, I do welcome this debate. It's a debate I hope we're going to have many more of, and they will be debates and statements brought forward by the Government in order for us to develop this journey that we're on together in terms of devolution of criminal justice. I think what's important about this debate—let's go back to why we're doing—

No, no, let's not go back—

One word only—

I've been very, very tolerant. You need to come to an end. 

Can we just welcome the Wales Governance Centre's report on sentencing and immediate custody as a very important report for us here today in Wales? 

Leanne Wood to reply to the debate. 

Diolch, Llywydd. I'd love to thank almost all of the Members for their contributions this afternoon. I'm not going to address UKIP's argument, because most of them made no sense and most of them were not backed up by fact—they were mostly informed by fake news, I think. If they really believe that nationality and ethnicity are linked to offending rates, then I wonder whether they see the historic parallels of such a stance. Your contribution was racist, racist, racist, racist.

I wasn't surprised to hear the Tories attempting to justify their disastrous criminal justice policy, That great line, 'criminality knows no boundaries', is a classic from the Brexit party. Why don't we have a European police force then, European prisons, a European criminal justice system? And, no, we are not opposed to having prisons—we are opposed to having huge prisons, we are opposed to having prison spaces that our country doesn't need. Of course our prison estate needs modernising, but we are arguing for the devolution of the criminal justice system so that we can do prison differently—more rehabilitative, smaller units for those people who have to be there. But overall, our policy aim should be to reduce the prison population and use more community-based sentences that we've all got confidence in. 

Bethan Sayed has outlined exactly what the prison campaign in Baglan was all about. She also put the issue in the context of the wider infrastructure investment priorities. People in Port Talbot have engaged in that debate as to how our criminal justice system should be developed in the future. Now, the whole of Wales needs to engage in this debate. Because what we do know is that when victims of crime are asked what they want, time and time again, they say that they want to stop the offender repeat offending. And what's the best way to do that? More people in prison? No, it's better community rehabilitation, and the research is absolutely clear on that point. 

Jenny Rathbone asked about the reasons behind the high incarceration figures for Wales, and I've explained what Napo's explanation is behind that. But there's no doubt that out higher deprivation levels in Wales have an impact on that as well. 

On the question of votes for prisoners, we're pleased that Labour supports this call. The UK Government has repeatedly failed to fulfil its human rights obligations in this area in line with international standards. We agree with the judgment from the European Court of Human Rights that there is no place for the automatic disenfranchisement of all prisoners. Further consideration can be given as to whether there should be restrictions on this, and I look forward to continuing with the inquiry and considering that point further.

Diolch, Helen Mary, for outlining so clearly the needs of Welsh speakers and the discrimination that women face in the system. We have to change what we do with all offenders, but for women and young people, the matter has reached a point of urgency. I'm of the view that we don't need a women's prison in Wales. We need to take a completely different approach if we want to see different outcomes, and she powerfully made the point that community sentences can be tough. They can be really tough. My experience as a probation officer, seeing clients crying in the room begging to be sent back to prison, is exactly the point that she's made, but it shows how tough community sentences can be. 

Yes, Alun Davies, the system is failing and it is failing badly, and that's why Plaid Cymru has been campaigning for the devolution of the criminal justice system, in its entirety, for decades now. And I welcome the fact that you have come on board. And I welcome the fact that you support the full devolution of the whole of the criminal justice system, because the Government amendment, as you pointed out, has deleted that part of our motion. And I very much hope that those Labour Members who do want to see the criminal justice system devolved in full will vote accordingly today. Let's see. 

It's disappointing, though, that we didn't get an adequate explanation from the Minister as to why they couldn't support us on this point, especially in the light of the contribution made by Alun Davies. It's not a constructive or a helpful amendment, Minister, and I think you should vote it down. 

I welcome, however, what you said on the probation service, and I look forward to discussing that further with you. We have to end the privatisation of unpaid work and group work, as well as one-to-one supervision. I understand that the Ministry of Justice don't want to renationalise those elements, and they want to keep it in private hands, so I hope that you can have some influence on that point. 

It's clear from this debate that most Members accept that the system is failing everyone. We have to be prepared to do things differently, and we can only do that if we have control over the relevant policy levers. We can't keep putting this off.

The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Member object? [Objection.] I will defer voting, therefore, under this item until voting time.

Voting deferred until voting time.