Shabana Mahmood speech at Labour Party Conference 2024

Shabana Mahmood MP, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, speech at Labour Party Conference 2024:

Thank you so much conference. More years ago than I am going to admit. There was a small girl, in Small Heath, working behind the till in her parent's corner shop.  

Inspired by re-runs of Kavanagh QC, she fell in love with an idea and an ideal, justice. The idea that all – wherever they are born and whoever to – are equal before the law. The idea that wrongs can and will be righted, and the belief that, in a court of law, the truth will always win out. 

It was no surprise to my parents when I became a lawyer. But I don't think even they believed I would become Lord Chancellor. Responsible for upholding our most ancient and enduring value, the rule of law.

An office nearly a thousand years old. Now held by someone whose parents arrived in this country just a few decades ago. It is the greatest honour of my life to hold this ancient role and to serve alongside my extraordinary Ministerial team James, Heidi, Alex, Nick and Fred. Thank you.

When I first stepped into the Ministry of Justice, I encountered a situation far from the ideal I have cherished all my life. Within minutes, I was told our justice system was on the point of collapse. 

Within weeks, our prisons would overflow. Had that happened, the consequences would have been apocalyptic, courts forced to cancel trials, Police unable to make arrests, criminals who would never see the inside of a cell and victims who would never see justice done. We would, in short, have seen the total breakdown of law and order. 

Justice demands crimes are met by punishment. The last Government put that basic principle at risk. Rather than having the bravery to act to ensure that justice could always be done in this country. Rishi Sunak called an election instead, putting his party's interest ahead of public safety. There is a good reason that I consider him, and those around him, the “guilty men”.  

Faced by the imminent collapse of our justice system, I had no choice. In the opening days of this government, I was forced to take immediate action to address the crisis in our prisons. We were forced to release some offenders a few weeks or months early.  

Now, let me be clear. This is no get out of jail free card. Those who are released face strict licence conditions. If they don't meet them, they will feel the grip of a hand on their collar. And they will be sent back to jail.  

I did not want to release anyone early. But the last Government left us with no choice. By the time this measure took effect, we were just one bad day from disaster. But I did not become Lord Chancellor because I thought that rescue alone is enough. I believe that our justice system needs reform. And I believe that the reform is most urgently needed when we consider the plight of women. 

Conference, the law has taken too long to address the realities of women's lives. Written mostly by men, the male experience is its default setting. Today, the law is still getting to grips with the reality of violence against women and girls. Consider, for instance, the fact that 60% of victims drop out of rape cases before they go to trial. And consider why.  

It is vital to the pursuit of justice that both sides – both prosecution and defence – can build their case. To do so, requires collecting evidence. But the evidence demanded of victims too often goes too far. Full counselling records are still being asked for when they are not necessary, phone records and message transcripts are being disclosed for no good reason. 

Requests like these should only be made when they are relevant to the case. When that test is not met, but this disclosure is still demanded, a victim's experience becomes even more traumatic. Embarrassing victims like this discourages them from going to trial.  

The problem is not that victims don't have rights.  Instead, until now, no part of the system has been dedicated to upholding those rights.  

In Northumberland, back in 2018, a radical new model evolved – developed by one pioneering Labour woman, Dame Vera Baird KC, here with us today, and delivered by another, Kim McGuinness. They introduced a historic innovation into our legal system Independent Legal Advocates. Who ensured that victims' interests were represented, without fear or favour, just like a defendant's. 

For the first time, victims were able to seek counsel from lawyers who were there for them, and them alone. They ensured that victims of rape knew their rights, and could challenge decisions they believe are wrong. In Northumberland, two out of three challenges to a request for victims' data were successful. The number of indiscriminate requests reduced dramatically, and the efficiency of trials improved as well. 

Today, I can proudly announce that – from next year - this Government will begin to roll out independent legal advocates. The first step to delivering our manifesto promise of having an independent advocate for rape victims in every part of the country. They do not undermine the right to a fair trial. They do not prevent evidence from coming to light. They simply take the rights victims already have, and make them a reality. And, by so doing, they rebalance the scales of justice.  

The inequities that women face in our justice system do not end in our courts. They extend to our prisons too. It is a truth too rarely acknowledged that most women in prison are victims themselves.  Over half - three in five - are victims of domestic abuse.  

Now, there will always be women imprisoned for the protection of the public. That will never change. But we imprison women on minor charges to a far greater degree than men.  

Around two thirds did not commit a violent crime. Yet they are sent into prisons that are desperate places. Self-harm in women's prisons is nine-times higher than in the male estate. But perhaps worst of all, women's prisons are hurting mothers and breaking homes. 

With only a few women's prisons, dotted across the country, women are often held far from their families, over half are mothers. The damage passes down generations, with three quarters of children leaving the family home when their mother is sent to jail.

Some women enter prison pregnant with around 50 children a year starting their lives in prison. Tragically women losing their children in childbirth. Conference, let me be clear. Nobody wants to live in a world where children are born in prison. But that is the world we live in.

And for all that harm, what do we get. For women, prison isn't working. Rather than encouraging rehabilitation, prison forces women into a life of crime. After leaving a short custodial sentence, a woman is significantly more likely to commit a further crime than one given a non-custodial sentence. The shameful fact is we have known all this for two decades. 

In 2007, Baroness Jean Corston - another pioneering Labour woman - undertook a landmark review. It was clear then, and it is clear now, that if we change how we treat women in prison, we cut crime. Keep families together.

And end the harm that passes from one generation to the next. For that reason, I am today announcing that this Government will launch a new body, the Women's Justice Board.  Its goal will be clear. To reduce the number of women going to prison, with the ultimate ambition of having fewer women's prisons. 

In Spring next year, it will publish a new strategy, focused on three things. Firstly, how we intervene earlier, looking at how to resolve cases before they go to court, secondly, how we make community support – such as residential women's centres – a viable alternative to prison, and thirdly, how we address the acute challenge of young women in custody, who are less than a tenth of the population, but account for over a third of self-harm.  

As part of this work, we will embrace the expertise of the voluntary sector. We won't just invite them to join us, we will ask them to report on our progress, publicly, holding us to account. We will reverse the failures of the Tory government, who promised to deliver on Jean Corston's work. But they squandered their time, leaving office with the number of women in prison rising again.  

The cost to those women, so often victims. To the children who depend upon them, and to society, when they are drawn further into a life of crime is far too great. It is high time we stopped sending so many women to prison.   

Conference, the ideal of justice has guided me throughout my life. But it wasn't until the 5th of July I realised how far we had fallen from that ideal. Justice isn't just a department of state. It is an ideal, a set of values, essential rights hard won over centuries.  

In the last fourteen years, the Tories eroded the public's confidence in that ideal. They devalued our justice system. And then the Guilty Men in the last Government brought it to the point of disaster.  

The so-called party of law and order, offered, as their parting gift, the prospect of lawless disorder.  We took immediate action. We will continue to do whatever it takes to rescue our justice system. But this Labour Party, and this Labour Government, does not exist only to clean up the Tory mess.

We know that our justice system can and must be better. I will not tolerate a world in which women drop charges, because they are forced to comply with unnecessary demands that serve only to extend their trauma.  

And I will not tolerate a world in which we lock up women, who are not violent, and destroy the lives of their innocent children as a result. Just because this is how things have been done, does not mean that they must always be done this way.  

I will reform our justice system wherever it falls short of that ideal. Change won't happen immediately. The crisis we have inherited is deep and there are more difficult days ahead of us.  But change is beginning.