Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
20-39)
MARIA EAGLE
MP AND MR
JONATHAN REES
25 JANUARY 2010
Q20 Anne Main: So you think there
is enough funding for those Rape Crisis Centres that you have
identified to stay open? Because you just said you were not sure
how many there were.
Maria Eagle: We are not. We are
only sure they are there if they come forward. There is not a
central register. I mean, we have a list of Rape Crisis Centres
that we know exist, because they have come to our attention one
way and another, sometimes because we have funded them centrally
or they have been funded by other central government departments,
but we do not have a comprehensive list, I could not say to you
now or in a Parliamentary answer that we definitely know how many
there are and where they all are.
Q21 Anne Main: I was just about to
say that: if you do not have a list, are you sure that there is
not patchy coverage, that some areas are very well covered, and
in other areas are not?
Maria Eagle: There is patchy coverage,
and that is quite clear from the work the Equality and Human Rights
Commission has done, that is what its Map of Gaps work indicates.
These are locally based organisations, and as you will know, much
of the funding that is meant to support the third sector is devolved
down via various government departments, whether it is Home Office,
whether it is DCLG, via local government and regional structures
in health and other departments, to fund those organisations.
To the extent that they apply and sometimes do not get funding
from there, that is where the gaps emerge. I think there is an
issue here that we have identified locally, because some fund
locally and others do not, and I think the work that the Equality
and Human Rights Commission has done, which it has published as
its Map of Gaps, indicates that there can be that issue, and they
have taken steps to try and enforce more of a focus locally, where
there are gaps on the local authorities and local and regional
agencies who fund the commissioners to address those gaps, and
that is work that we welcome in the GEO.
Mr Rees: If I could just add,
one of the big issues is that most of these Rape Crisis Centres
are very, very small, and therefore, where we have been working
with them is to try and help them become sustainable. Part of
what has happened over the last three years is you have to be
much more professional at applying for local government or indeed
Office of the Third Sector or other funding, and we will be publishing
a report on that in the next month or so, as to how they can become
sustainable. So we have run two funds in each of the last two
years so that all of those Rape Crisis Centres that we were aware
of have been able to be funded, but clearly what we want to get
to is a position where they can sustain themselves going forward.
Q22 Anne Main: But if the funding
is not protected, is it going to be something like the sexual
health services whereby as soon as it is not ringfenced, it becomes
a competing priority and it may not happen; in which case, how
does that sit with the ambitions of the department?
Maria Eagle: There is an issue
here about educating local commissioners and regional commissioners,
and this is in health, in local government, sometimes in the criminal
justice system, that funding organisations such as this is part
of what their core business ought to be. Some of them get it and
some of them do not, which is why you have the gaps that you have.
Now the money that we have put into making sure that the existing
Rape Crisis Centres do not go out of business over the last few
years has been about sustaining them until the local commissioners
can recognise their own obligations in this respect. So this is
not a matter of there being funding or there not being funding,
it is a matter of priorities in respect of local commissioners.
So there is an education job to do there which the Rape Crisis
Centres themselves also have a part in playing, in making sure
we get that across, but central government departments which do
not generally fund such things, and that includes GEO, should
not be having to step in to fill gaps that local commissioners,
who ought to be commissioning these services, have left.
Q23 Anne Main: You have just said
about education of local authorities, the Fawcett Society recommended
having an awareness raising campaign similar to the drink driving
awareness campaign, a campaign on rape and sexual violence. Is
that something you would consider then, in terms of part of educating
the whole process?
Maria Eagle: I think we have done
a certain amount of that already, and so have the Equality and
Human Rights Commission. They do it by publishing their Map of
Gaps and then writing to local authorities where there are gaps,
and saying: do you know you ought to be doing this?
Q24 Anne Main: I think they were
thinking more, as I say, like the drink driving campaign, something
on the television, perhaps a Rape Crisis helpline as well, like
a ChildLine-type thing.
Maria Eagle: We do fund rape crisis
helplines.
Mr Rees: We do, and that is one
of the issues that will flow from the review that Baroness Stern
is undertaking. What we are talking about here is there is a need
for commissioners to understand the role that the voluntary sector
can provide in helping women who have been raped, but also occasionally
men. There is then a need for the voluntary sector to understand,
if I can put it in these terms, how to get money in a much more
professional way, where services are tending to be bundled up
and commissioned over three years. Then there is the point that
you are making, which is there is also a need to raise awareness
across the whole of the community, and that is one of the things
that we will be looking at with Baroness Stern when she does her
recommendations in the next few weeks.
Q25 Chair: I think there is a problem
in that rape, and domestic violence for that matter, are very
under-reported; the pressure on the local police force and others
is to reduce crime figures, and yet it can be argued that a really
successful campaign highlighting domestic violence, that it is
unacceptable, et cetera, could actually worsen the crime figures,
because more people would come forward and report it, not because
there is actually any more crime. So there are kind of two things
pushing against each other.
Maria Eagle: I think that is true.
I think part of what you have seen over the last few years has
been increased reporting of rape and of this kind of crime, and
the criminal justice agencies, including the police and the CPS,
have been taking this kind of crime, domestic violence and rape,
much more seriously. Obviously it is patchy, between different
places which have different strengths in this respect, but they
have been dealing with it in an appropriate manner much more seriously.
I think there has been a lot of learning, particularly in the
criminal justice system over the last 10 or 12 years in this area,
but there is no doubt about the fact that many women, and occasionally,
as Jonathan says, sometimes men who get attacked in this way,
do have a pretty bad experience in terms of having their needs
met, having their story believed, and being able to go forward
appropriately to assist the police in successful prosecutions.
There is no doubt about that, and that is what we are hoping the
Stern review will help us to do better.
Q26 Alison Seabeck: The Corston review
report almost three years old now, what is your view on the implementation
of it? How successful have government departments been, for example,
and others in taking forward her suggestions?
Maria Eagle: Very successful.
I mean, in terms of the recommendations which were accepted, and
almost all of them were, most of the recommendations and the actions
that flowed from them have been implemented, and so we have seen
over the last year, since some of that was done, almost a 5% fall
in the number of women in prison, at a time when the adult male
prison population has gone up by 2%. You have to remember that
the male population is 95% of the total, and the female population
is 5% of the total, and this is one of the reasons why you had
a certain amount of invisibility in the prison and probation system,
was that there are far fewer women and girls involved in it than
there are boys and men. So there was a tendency amongst those
who organise it, entirely understandably, not to really understand
fully the differences between women's offending and men's offending,
and therefore the different approach that there ought to be to
dealing with it. The fact that far more women are sent to prison
for less serious offences, when government policy quite clearly
is that prison is for serious and dangerous offenders, in part
because such a small percentage of the population who get involved
in the criminal justice system are women, there are not the interventions
there in the same numbers, and there is not the same amount of
learning about what works with women as there is about men. So
consequently, we have to adjust the understanding of the entire
intervention across the criminal justice system. That is a cultural
thing that takes time, but I think the work that MoJ has been
able to do, putting in extra money to provide community based
solutions to some of the problems that lead to female offending,
has the potential to make that 5% fall a much bigger fall.
Q27 Alison Seabeck: But there are
still issues, are there not, you know, I hear what you are saying
about working in the community, trying to keep women out of prison,
and that is very welcome, but you still have women in prison who
are entitled only to a five-minute phone call once a month, women
with children. Where are the improvements there? What can be done
to improve that?
Maria Eagle: There is no limit
of five minutes once a month in terms of phone calls.
Q28 Chair: Free, I think. You have
to pay for them beyond that.
Maria Eagle: You have to pay for
them, indeed, but there is no such limit on time. There may well
be an issue about whether people can afford to pay for them; yes,
they do have to be paid for. Generally, because there are far
fewer women's jails, only 13, women tend to be kept further away
when they are imprisoned from their families than men. This is
one of the reasons why, if they are not a serious or dangerous
offender, it is better to find a solution outside of sending them
to prison if at all possible. We know that a third of the women
who are sent to prison are sent there for theft and handling,
probably persistent petty theft rather than serious conspiracy
to steal millions of pounds, petty, smaller levels, but no doubt
to the magistrate that they keep coming in front of, there is
an issue about, what do I do with this person if they keep breaking
all the orders that are made, apart from sending them to prison?
There is an issue there, which is where I hope the community provision,
the one-stop shops, the women's centres that we are putting into
place, and that MoJ has found £15.6 million to fund, will
start providing some alternatives that work. In fact, GEO has
been helping in respect of this by running some awareness raising
and networking events, I am speaking at the final one tomorrow
in Cardiff, which brings together all the local agencies to talk
about the different nature of women's offending, and what can
be done instead; the fact that many women who end up in prison
are drug addicted, 80% of them have mental health problems, 60%
of them have a dependent child, who often then gets taken into
care, or loses their main carer, because there may only be a single
carer, and that putting women in prison in those circumstances
for usually a very short period of time does not give the Prison
Service time to intervene properly to address the offending behaviour,
because short-term sentences are difficult to do that during,
but also can cause a downward spiral for the woman in terms of
losing her home, losing her children often, and it is not necessarily
the best way of tackling the offending behaviour.
Q29 Alison Seabeck: And contributing
to the very high levels of self-harm in prison. Indeed, something
like 50% of self-harm in prison is committed by women who are
less than 5% of the population, so there is a very significantly
higher level of self-harm amongst women in prison than amongst
men. There are these very striking differences which do justify,
under the gender duty, different treatment in terms of solutions.
I think that the response to Corston, and to the work that Jean
Corston did, and the work that the Government has done in implementing
her recommendations, has made the administration of prisons and
probation really see that there is a difference, which previously
was pretty invisible to them. One example, and this was one of
Jean Corston's clear recommendations, was to end strip searching,
it is called full searching in prison terms, but it does not routinely
happen in any women's prison any longer. Given that many of the
women who end up in jail were victims of violence and sexual abuse
before they became offenders themselves, one could see how the
idea of routine strip searching might add to distress. I have
visited a lot of women's prisons in my other role as MoJ Prisons
Minister, and what those responsible for security say to me is
that the new full searching regime not only makes for much better
relationships between prisoners and staff, but it also means that
they get better intelligence about when searches do need to be
conducted, because they get told, "Oh, X is bringing something
in"; better all round, effectively. I think that is as a
direct result of the understanding that Jean Corston brought in
her report, which has been taken on board by the Prison Service.
Q30 Alison Seabeck: Can I come back
to the gender duty and the implementation of it by those involved
in the criminal justice system? How happy are you with that implementation?
Sorry to come back to measurement again, because I do accept some
of the points you have been making, but how can you measure that,
that they are actually making progress?
Maria Eagle: It is anecdotal at
present, because it is hard to measure, but I think the fact that
we now have, in the prison end, the custody end of the criminal
justice system, gender specific standards, a framework for how
to deal with women that indicates that there are differences with
men, shows that in policy terms, the gender duty is being taken
on board, and is being understood. I think there are other bits
of the criminal justice system that could learn from the work
of the custodial end, and I think actually one of the advantages
of some of the provision that we are supporting in communities,
the one-stop shops for women offenders, one of the advantages
of that provision is it can help aid understanding across other
parts of the criminal justice system about these differences,
and that has to be good, but I think there are local authorities
and perhaps the police and CPS who are slightly behind, I think,
the NOMS, the National Offender Management Service, in their understanding
of these issues.
Q31 Chair: Can I ask about foreign
prisoners? I notice that 20% of the female prison population are
foreign nationals. Would a high proportion of them be involved
in bringing in drugs?
Maria Eagle: Yes, I think it is
fair to say that a high proportion of them are either drug mules,
as they are called, serving long sentences therefore, deterrent
sentences, or people who have been charged with fraud because
they do not have the right identity papers, although some of them
may be trafficked women, but I think a high percentage of them,
yes, indeed, are drug mules.
Q32 Chair: Obviously there is a need
to discourage other women in the countries from which the drugs
are coming from thinking this is a risk-free way of getting a
lot of money, but does the department have any thoughts about
a better way of doing it than just locking these women up, far
from their homes, for a very long period of time, and then deporting
them at the end of their sentence, presumably?
Maria Eagle: It is quite difficult
once a sentence has been given to start interfering, obviously
the judge has made his decision in respect of particular individuals.
I think the deterrent sentences are working, in the sense that
combined with the work that Foreign Office, DfID, MoJ and Home
Office do in some of the countries of origin, if you combine that
with the deterrent sentences that others who have tried to do
this have got, it is acting as a deterrent. The numbers of foreign
national prisoners that we have in our prison system, male and
female, and the percentage is higher in the female estate than
in the male estate, it is 14% in the male estate, is relatively
low compared with most of the rest of Europe, relatively low.
Q33 Chair: That is interesting.
Maria Eagle: In fact, one of the
lowest.
Q34 Chair: It is not something you
would gain from reading the press.
Maria Eagle: It depends which
newspaper you read.
Q35 Anne Main: Empowering black and
ethnic minority women is one of the key objectives of the department.
I would like to ask a controversial question: in France, they
have described women who are fully veiled as walking prisoners;
leaving aside being a statement of faith, they have actually said
it actually makes a barrier for a woman entering into the workplace,
makes a barrier for them engaging with society. Do you have any
views on that?
Maria Eagle: Yes, I do,—I
do not agree with that.
Q36 Anne Main: I am not sure what
you do not agree with.
Maria Eagle: I do not agree with
that statement, with that view of the veil—
Q37 Anne Main: Being a prison?
Maria Eagle: —or the various
types of clothing.
Q38 Anne Main: Like the niqab, I
am thinking.
Maria Eagle: I do not think it
is, in Britain, something that we do, I do not think we tell people
how to dress in that way. I do not think it is part of the British
tradition to do that. I have my views about whether I would see
covering my face up as empowering or not as an individual, but
I do not think it is for me to impose those views on others who
may have a different view, and I do not think it is helpful, this
is my own personal view, to start banning particular types of
dress. I think that the downside of that, which is appearing to
be oppressive to particular traditions, can outweigh any benefit
that you might gain from it. I do not think it is part of the
British way.
Q39 Anne Main: No, but obviously
the French are saying they do not want to be part of the British
way, and that is why they are doing it, they have actually cited
that.
Maria Eagle: Yes, I do not suppose
the French are as concerned as we might be about what the British
way of doing things is.
Anne Main: I just thought I would ask.
Chair: Shall we move on the questions
we were going to ask about age discrimination?
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