Liz Saville Roberts
MP for Dwyfor Meirionnydd · Plaid Cymru · United Kingdom
“I speak as the chair of the new justice unions all-party parliamentary group, which hears from six trade unions representing workers across prisons, probation, policing and the courts.”
“Q9. Yr Heliwr in Nefyn is a community-owned pub, and it is buzzing with events fuelled by local beers and food. I have to declare an interest; I have shares in Yr Heliwr, and it makes my husband very happy indeed.”
“It is welcome that the UK is finally banning trade with illegal settlements in Palestine and it is right that we no longer condone economic tolerance for these settlements, which fly in the face of international law and the sovereignty of Palestine.”
“If this is a Union of equals, let me turn to the wildfires that we suffered in Wales and England this summer. The Rhinogydd mountains of Eryri national park are the last true upland wilderness in Wales. They burned for over two weeks in July, causing immeasurable damage to peatlands and wildlife.”
“I appreciate the tone of the Secretary of State’s answer. I note that the Prime Minister said yesterday that change begins with honesty, so let us be honest: harping on about the strength of the Union in the same breath as calling for change is a distraction.”
“Q5. Our new Plaid Cymru Government have laid the foundations for change, showing what Wales can achieve with the powers we have. The Prime Minister says that devolving powers means better public services, and I agree with him, but policing in Wales is still controlled from afar here in Westminster.”
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“The leader of the Liberal Democrats is making a powerful speech. I am sure he will agree that decades of deferential and, frankly, sycophantic treatment by Parliament and state authorities are being exposed as having enabled Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to behave as though he were untouchable. I am sure he will also join me in calling on the Government to introduce independent oversight of those members of the royal family who undertake official duties, and in requiring transparency and scrutiny of anything paid for by the state from now on, because apparently, they work for us.”
“There are real concerns that non-state actors, such as the commercial public relations organisation APCO and possibly Palantir Technologies, are selling services to carry out surveillance with the purpose of smearing journalists in the United Kingdom. If the Government are not just uttering polite, meaningless words about protecting journalists, surely we now need an independent investigation so that we can move beyond process and look at how to regulate such non-state actors?”
“Last October’s National Audit Office report into ECO4 wall insulation found extensive evidence of fraud and cowboy workmanship. Consumer Energy Solutions of Swansea went into receivership last month, and I have received scores of complaints regarding air source heat pumps and solar panels installed by that company and others, with some people having no heating or hot water. Could the Leader of the House advise me what parliamentary measures are available to me to ensure that there is an independent inquiry into fraud and misuse of taxpayers’ money with ECO4?”
“Does the Department have a procurement strategy to ensure security of supply of medical radioisotopes, which are so critical for diagnosis and treatment? Could the Minister provide details of the co-operation and assessments made by her Government with the Welsh Government on Project ARTHUR, the isotope reactor scheme at Trawsfynydd?”
“Northern Ireland has just committed to a full graduated driving licence system from October this year, which includes post-test restrictions that are designed to reduce exposure to high risk situations, such as carrying peer passengers. Evidence from other countries shows that graduated systems significantly reduce young driver casualties, and they save lives. Safer roads mean fewer accidents, and they also mean lower insurance premiums for young people, which is a message the Government should engage with. The Government should monitor Northern Ireland’s approach as a pilot for the rest of the UK.”
“Heaven knows, as Mathew’s father says, that people lose their gun licences, their guns and gun paraphernalia at any suggestion of police concern, but people keep their driving licences far, far too easily. It is a sad fact that inexperienced young drivers remain disproportionately at risk of being killed or injured on the roads. We had the tragic case in my constituency of Harvey Owen who was a passenger in a car driven by a friend, along with two others, all of them teenagers, who lost their lives in 2023 when their car came off the A4085 near Llanfrothen and overturned in a ditch. Harvey’s mother Crystal—I am sure many Members will know her—is campaigning for graduated driving licences.”
“I wish to open my contribution to the debate with a tribute to a young man from Pwllheli who was killed in a hideous two-car collision on the Porthmadog bypass just days before Christmas. While we await the inquest, I hope it is some comfort to his family that so many people in our home community want to see changes to the law as a memorial and mark of respect for the life of Mathew Hardy. He was 34 years old and the only child of Simon and Glenys. Mathew’s partner, Mari, is expecting a baby in three months’ time—too many lives shattered by irreplaceable loss. While many of us treat the right—the license—to drive a car with a familiarity verging on contempt, such tragedies remind us how dangerous vehicles can potentially be for all road users.”
“The driver who inflicted this on the family was drunk and driving at speed. Amanda begs the Government to bring down the alcohol limit and to address sentencing. When the drunken driver was sentenced, Amanda was told that this man would not even have been sentenced to imprisonment if he had killed only one child. Imagine that—it took two children to be killed for this man to be sentenced to imprisonment. I urge the Minister to meet lobbyists and to meet families as well, because this might well be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make a change that will benefit very many people’s lives.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful suggestion. It is interesting that we are all talking along the same lines. I welcome that the road safety strategy includes consultation on proposed changes to penalties for motoring offences. For families who have lost loved ones to repeat drink-drive and drug-drive offenders, it is incomprehensible why those drivers do not lose their licences at the point of providing a positive test. At the very least, that should happen automatically at a second or further offence. Such a policy would ensure that there was swift preventive action when there is clear evidence of risk. My last example is that of Amanda Peak, who lives in Brithdir, near Dolgellau. She lost both her sons, Arron, aged 10, and Ben, aged eight, and her husband was badly injured.”
“The victims and survivors of Epstein and his circle of the over-privileged elite are at the forefront of my mind here and now. Mandelson, we now know, described Epstein’s release from prison after he was sentenced for child sex offences as “Liberation day”. This man’s association with Epstein was known when the Prime Minister personally appointed him as the UK’s ambassador to the USA. How can we trust the Prime Minister’s judgment, and if we question that, how can we trust him enough for him to remain Prime Minister?”
“The Veterans’ Commissioner for Wales has said that support for veterans to tackle “substance abuse, mental health crisis and residential services do not exist within NHS Wales as they do in NHS England”. What steps is the Minister taking to work with the commissioner and the Welsh Government to improve access to essential services? Will she encourage veterans to attend my event in Caernarfon on Sunday, which will bring together a host of key support organisations?”
“Labour appointee Lord Mandelson has been a pivotal figure in the Prime Minister’s leadership project, and this is now a damage limitation exercise for the Government. There is deep irony in the fact that a Government can appoint people to the House of Lords, but cannot clear up their own mess. Why have the Government not referred this to the police? Does the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister admit that this is doing grave harm to the public’s confidence in the accountability of our democratic institutions?”
“The manipulation of truth is a vital component of genocide. The Nazis played on prejudice and stereotypes to scapegoat and dehumanise people they regarded as subhuman. The Nazi regime also practised a propaganda of deception by hiding details about the “final solution”; there were press controls to prevent the public reading statements by the allies condemning Nazi crimes. One booklet printed in 1941 glowingly reported that in occupied Poland, German authorities had put Jewish people to work, built clean hospitals, set up soup kitchens, and provided Jewish people with newspapers and vocational training. The authority of the written word and the broadcast word was abused to manipulate the truth.”
“The theme for International Holocaust Memorial Day this year is “Bridging Generations”. It is a reminder that the responsibility of remembrance lives on through not only survivors, but their descendants, and all of us. It is also a reminder of our fragile link to the Holocaust. A 2026 study from the Claims Conference shows that approximately 196,000 Jewish holocaust survivors are still with us. They are a living testimony to the horrors imposed by Nazi Germany, and a lesson from history to never repeat those horrors. They are also ageing. The median age of Jewish holocaust survivors is 87. By preserving the link with our past, we can ensure its retelling. It is vital that we keep listening to and sharing their testimonies, so that future generations can understand how distortions of truth can lead to the greatest crime of all: genocide.”
“In the noise and confusion of present events, we are required to call out genocidal actions, wherever and by whomever they are committed. It is our duty to be the watchdogs warning against genocide, be it in Myanmar against the Rohingya Muslims, in China against the Uyghur Muslims, or in Gaza against the people of Palestine. The International Court of Justice is, as we speak, deciding on the application of the convention of genocide to Myanmar. This decision will be of immense significance in relation to forced displacement and Myanmar’s military attacks on the Rohingya. If the Court rules that mass deportation was a motive, not a defence, for genocide, that may become a precedent for a similar ruling against the Israeli Government; it is important that that is said today.”
“The definition is deliberately narrow: “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” We know that this is happening now, and that it will happen in the future. We need international bodies and the rules-based order to hold people to account for genocide, to define it, and to take criminal steps as necessary. We know that we need that, because we can look back and learn that from history.”
“As we commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, we remember other atrocities: the Holodomor in Ukraine, and genocide against the Armenians, and in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. Forgive me, but that is not, and cannot be, an exhaustive list. There have been, there are and there will be other crimes of genocide. We cannot comfort ourselves by presuming that these events are consigned to history. The convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide is the treaty that criminalises genocide.”
“It is an honour to be here, representing my Dwyfor Meirionnydd constituents and Plaid Cymru, to remember, first, the 6 million Jewish children, women and men murdered in the Holocaust, and also the millions more murdered in the Nazi persecution of other communities, which many other Members have mentioned. I hand my greatest congratulations to the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) on his excellent introduction, and to the hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols). We will bear in mind those words: “history is someone else’s story; memory is my story.” Of course, there has also been reference to our history in the United Kingdom. When we look abroad, it is very important that we know what has happened here.”
“We must listen to genocide survivors and support those who shine a light on grave injustices, wherever they are. It is only through listening to testimony, and through our common humanity, that we can learn from the past and secure genuine justice for victims. We must stand against actions such as the terrible attacks in Manchester last year. In an increasingly troubled world in which the rules-based order is threatened, we would all do well to remember that the genocide convention obligates state parties to pursue the enforcement of the prohibition on genocide. Though the promise of “never again” has been ignored time and again, we must all play our part in listening and learning from the stories of the victims of genocide.”
“At the same time, there are wider questions—how we find a balance, and how we, in our privileged position, use the language at our disposal to make sure that we are not pushing truth further and further into the undergrowth. Jan Karski was a Polish Catholic diplomat who brought eyewitness reports of the true scale of Nazi atrocities to western leaders as early as 1942. He risked his life to alert the world to murder. Largely ignored at the time, Karski argued that “the common humanity of people, not the power of governments, is the only real protector of human rights”. His memory is a challenge to all of us who speak as public leaders. If this year’s theme teaches us anything, it is to be alert to those who would distort the truth for their own ends.”
“The hon. Member makes an important point. I think that we can be sophisticated enough to call out the horrors of Hamas while criticising actions that may well be found in future to comprise genocide. We have not reached that point in law yet, but we in this place should be open to questioning received narratives. Most Members here are trying to phrase our arguments in the measured way that the debate deserves. We are talking about horrific crimes against humanity in the past, and possibly in the present. That needs to be done in a balanced way. All of us are horrified by the actions of Hamas and the attacks in Manchester last year.”
“I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—specifically, my role as the co-chair of the Justice Unions Parliamentary Group. The White Paper recognises that changes to policing governance and crime prevention in Wales will have to reflect the existence of more than a quarter of a century of devolution. Meanwhile, three independent commissions have recommended that justice and policing be devolved to Wales. Considering that around 56% of our police funding in Wales already comes from devolved sources, does the Home Secretary not agree that this package of radical changes is exactly the right time for the devolution of policing to Wales?”
“I, too, welcome the armed forces covenant and the legal duty that it will place on devolved nations. Of course, while Wales has 5% of the population, we contribute 7% to Army strength. Could the Secretary of State tell me, therefore, whether any extra new money will be coming to Wales to support the covenant, particularly in the NHS, which is of course so beneficial to veterans?”
“Diolch yn fawr, Llefarydd. On 9 January, Consumer Energy Solutions went into administration, and 300 people across Wales lost their jobs. In my constituency alone, more than 40 households have told me that they have been left in limbo, often without heating or hot water, and many of these people are elderly or ill. Given that the right hon. Member’s Government scrapped the energy company obligation 4 scheme abruptly, what support will be provided to make sure that householders are not left to pay after CES walks away?”
“We are expecting an announcement on the warm homes plan, which is of course to be welcomed, but we cannot rerun the errors of ECO4. An investigation by the National Audit Office into wall insulation revealed fraud and shoddy work. Will the Secretary of State therefore join me in calling for a public investigation into ECO4 air source heat pumps and solar panels, so we get a full, independent evaluation of the incidence of bad practice, questionable profits and fraud?”
“There is much to welcome in the warm homes plan. Wales has the oldest housing stock in Europe, with around a third of houses built before 1919. Because of that, Wales is rightly a net beneficiary of ECO schemes; it accounts for 6% of all ECO measures and 12% of ECO4. The Secretary of State will recognise that that is higher than the Barnett consequential funding, based on population share. Can he explain how the warm homes funding for Wales will be sufficient to meet the extreme challenges facing Welsh homeowners?”
“Diolch yn fawr iawn, Dirprwy Lefarydd. I would say to the Secretary of State “Cofiwch Dryweryn”, because water has always been political in Wales. The White Paper suggests that the UK Government may finally devolve additional powers over water to the Welsh Government. Considering that could have happened years ago under section 48 of the Wales Act 2017, which was delayed—incredibly—at the request of the Labour Welsh Government, can she now set a timeline for when the people of Wales will have power over our own water?”
“Victims of convicted paedophile Neil Foden, the former headmaster of Ysgol Friars, are furious that he is still in receipt of his pension even though he is in prison. The forfeiture panel has met and come to a conclusion; when will that conclusion as to whether he continues to receive his pension be published?”
“7. What discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the potential impact of her policies on the cost of living in Scotland.”
“England-only projects such as Northern Powerhouse Rail give the Scottish Government the Barnett consequentials that they rightly choose to use on cost of living support such as the Scottish child payment, but Wales is denied any such extra funding. The Secretary of State’s Government have committed to learning lessons from HS2. Why can Wales not have the same means? I assure him that would allow a Plaid Cymru Welsh Government to spend in order to alleviate child poverty.”
“Of course we welcome the new offshore wind projects in Wales and all the anticipated jobs, but if only we could guarantee that profits would stay in our communities and the use of local supply chains were contractually hardwired! Will the Government ensure that time is secured for a debate on the Crown Estate (Wales) Bill, so that we can discuss how the people of Wales will receive their fair share of offshore wind profits?”
“Diolch yn fawr iawn, Dirprwy Lefarydd. We are appalled at reports of thousands of state killings in Iran, and we support the fundamental right of the people of Iran to self-determination. President Trump says that help is “on its way”, and there are also reports that the Prime Minister is set to accept a place on President’s Trump’s board to run Gaza. Given that, can the Foreign Secretary guarantee that her Government’s priorities in the region will be peace and stability alone?”
“We have already recognised that there is a regional aspect to this issue. Wales’s Crown courts generally outperform those in England. They are not perfect—we have a backlog of maintenance issues and other problems—but I can only reiterate the opposition of past and present Labour Welsh Government Counsels General, who say that scrapping jury trials is both extreme and unnecessary. Why not take this as an opportunity to keep jury trials in Wales so that we can get a real-time impact assessment that we could compare with what is happening in England if we have to have changes?”
“Many of our constituents will be anxious about UK involvement in US operations given Trump’s vocal drive for American imperialism. Of course, Plaid Cymru is unequivocal that any action taken by the UK military must respect international law; that includes today’s events and all others. With oil further politicised following the US seizure of the Bella 1, with UK support, what steps will be taken to secure critical UK oil and port infrastructure at key sites such as Milford Haven and Holyhead given recent global developments in energy and shipping?”
“I welcome the Erasmus+ agreement as closer ties with Europe are good news for the futures of thousands upon thousands of young people. Since 2022, the Taith programme in Wales has offered life-changing opportunities for people to study abroad after Brexit slammed so many doors shut. Given its implications for Taith, how will Wales’s priorities be reflected in the administration of Erasmus+?”
“Because of that, Karen Ephraim is refused access to her daughter’s medical notes, as she has not got her daughter’s permission to access them. That is all logical, officially, but it makes no sense to a grieving mother looking for answers. Will the Minister please meet Gwenno’s family, Karen Ephraim? It is better if the questions come from her mother than from her Member of Parliament. Let us remember that Gwenno was in the care of the state—in prison, in hospital and on licence. We failed her.”
“How is it possible for a young woman to be released from suicide watch in prison to chaotic bed-and-breakfast accommodation over and over again? On 7 August, North Wales police put out a missing person appeal for Gwenno. It stated that she was “last seen in…Bangor…on Monday night (28 July)…CCTV footage…appears to show Gwenno walking alone between 10.20 pm and 11.10 pm”, by which time it is understood that she had reached the Menai suspension bridge. She has not been seen since. The emergency services and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution made searches in the days immediately afterwards, but they found nothing. An inquest has not been opened because Gwenno is officially missing—that is her status.”
“It is through the full devolution of the criminal justice system that we can start to fix structural problems and address systematic issues in Wales that hinder both effective rehabilitation and the safety and welfare of victims, survivors and their families. This is not a political ask or a tick-box on a constitutional wish list; it is a pragmatic solution with the needs of people—victims and offenders within their communities—at its heart. Gwenno Ephraim had been happy at school until the age of 16. She found the move to college difficult, and of course, after this there was covid—and there was a traumatic event in the family. Her mental health made her vulnerable. After offending, the only place where Gwenno found the safety of routine was in prison; she was in and out eight times between January and July this year.”
“The Government say that Wales has a “unique nature of devolved arrangements”, but rather than addressing the fundamental incoherence of those arrangements and devolving criminal justice, the UK Government are instead expecting the Welsh Government to help work things out in Wales. The delayed policing white paper is an opportunity for the UK Government to undertake meaningful reform to improve Welsh policing and the criminal justice system in Wales. To do that effectively, the Government must engage with the repeated recommendations of independent experts. I come to my conclusion. Let us put ourselves in the position of Gwenno’s family. They have seen how offenders and ex-offenders in Wales, and their families, are failed by a resolute lack of joined-up thinking.”
“Can she tell me how that will work for Wales, what the Welsh Government could actually do, and what would be in place to ensure that the UK Government keep to their side of any deal? In reality, this is a way for the UK Government to essentially subcontract the meaningful community-based work, while refusing to give up the powers that set the agenda. That works for no one. If it did, why was it not the recommendation made by multiple independent commissions? I beg the Minister to answer that question. That is particularly important considering the way that the abolition of police and crime commissioners is being handled in Wales.”
“To make that a reality, we need devolution. If change has to happen anyway, why not undertake real, lasting change that puts in practice what is actually being asked for in Wales and what could make a real difference to people like Gwenno in future? I understand that the UK Government propose a memorandum of understanding to allow for some changes in Wales, but can the Minister tell me specifically what that would achieve in practice, because I understand from the House of Commons Library that a memorandum of understanding based on the Manchester model has “no legal force”? In the case of the Manchester agreement, either side would be free to withdraw from the MOU “at any time”, and it is not possible to raise a formal dispute or take legal action “if either side believes the terms of the MOU have not been adhered to”.”
“However, in response to an amendment by Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd calling for the devolution of probation—as recommended by his own commission’s report, by the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales, and by the Commission on the UK’s Future, chaired by Gordon Brown—the Government Minister’s response was that the “capacity for change in the Probation Service…is pretty much maxed out”. —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 3 December 2025; Vol. 850, c. 1889.] I am proud to say that that is not the view of many probation staff in Wales. For the Wales Probation Development Group, this juncture provides an opportunity for a 21st-century probation service that is locally managed, commissioned and delivered, with an emphasis on rehabilitation, desistance and the importance of relationships.”
“It is no secret that the probation system is overstretched, and that is an accepted reason behind the higher rates of ex-offenders like Gwenno being recalled to prison and behind any risks not being taken when there are breaches in licence conditions. As the co-chair of the justice unions parliamentary group, I have heard directly from probation staff who warn that unless the service receives a significant funding uplift and a marked change in both working conditions and culture, the UK Government’s Sentencing Bill plans simply cannot succeed. A major overhaul is necessary.”
“Communication and data tracking between relevant bodies is the bare minimum expectation. This is, as it stands, not effective governance of criminal justice in Wales. I will turn now to probation. When Gwenno lost her train ticket home from HMP Styal, she missed her probation appointment back home in Wales. Therefore, she was in breach of her licence and was sent straight back to prison. Her experience again shows how the Probation Service has to operate in this “jagged edge”, where prisoners are at risk of being cut off from the support that they need to negotiate the difficult space between prison and rehabilitation.”
“In Wales, this is where the “jagged edge” is particularly clear—where the wraparound services to help ex-offenders are, of course, devolved. Gwenno was released on occasion without a fixed address, far from home. The number of people released into homelessness from Welsh prisons rose by 34% in 2024-25, and we do not even know how many Welsh prisoners released as part of the Government’s SDS40 scheme—standard determinate sentence 40—between September 2024 and March 2025 were released into homelessness, because the Ministry of Justice did not provide that data when the Wales Governance Centre requested it. There is a real constitutional question on why data on the impact of UK-level decisions that have a knock-on effect on devolved services on the ground in Wales cannot be released.”
“I say this following the news of HMP Parc’s approved expansion, despite serious concerns over safety and access to drugs, and the prison recording the highest number of deaths for a single prison in 2024—the joint highest ever recorded in England and Wales. Surely placing more people in a prison where the number of prisoner-on-prisoner assaults has risen by 15%, alongside a rise in self-harm and assaults on staff, is a recipe for disaster. Also, accounting for women and category A prisoners, who also cannot be accommodated in the Welsh prison estate, is providing Wales with 700 more prison places than we presently have Welsh prisoners really a sensible idea? This could see Wales’s in-country imprisonment rate surpass the average for the whole of Europe. Of course, it is to be anticipated that prisoners are eventually released.”
“That last point is important, considering that a recent study by Rob Jones and Gregory Davies found that Welsh-speaking prisoners have “experienced widespread neglect of their needs and overt interferences with their use of the Welsh language” in prison. Were prisons in Wales answerable to the Senedd, more stringent Welsh language requirements would apply and the language rights of Welsh speakers in prisons would very likely be more robust. As the UK Government deal with a prison crisis that incentivises filling spaces wherever they are available, the differing needs in Wales are all the more important for us to stress.”
“Of course, it is not just people from Wales; 35% of all prisoners held in Wales last year were from England, with 65% of them held at HMP Berwyn in Wrexham. That is not sustainable—and so says the PCS union at Berwyn. Staff are worried that as prisoners are released early under new Government plans, empty spaces will be filled by prisoners turned away from full prisons closer to home. Of course, it is not a one-way street; around 30% of prisoners from Wales were being held across 109 prisons in England, away from their families, support networks, culture and sometimes their first language, as was exactly the case for Gwenno.”
“Like Gwenno, Welsh women are sent to prisons all across England, although predominantly to HMP Styal and HMP Eastwood Park in Gloucestershire. Last year, 78% of those women—more than three quarters—were sentenced to 12 months or less, while nearly a quarter received a month or less. Such short sentences do nothing to rehabilitate female offenders, but they do plenty to derail lives. With a 45% increase in the numbers recalled to custody for breach of licence in Wales in 2024, Gwenno’s revolving door experience is far from unique. It does not improve when we look at the wider picture, either. Wales has had a higher in-country imprisonment rate than England since 2019, with 167 prisoners per 100,000 head of population in 2024—the highest in western Europe. In fact, one in every 648 people from Wales was in prison last year.”
“This was the beginning of a vortex of bed and breakfast rooms, breaches of licence conditions, pointlessly short returns to HMP Styal, hand washing over terms like “capacity”, when Gwenno’s vulnerability was obvious, and harrowing mental health episodes in train stations, hospitals and north Wales seaside towns. Although health and homelessness support through local authorities are devolved to Wales, criminal justice is not. Welsh women’s experience of the criminal justice system epitomises what Dr Rob Jones and Professor Richard Wyn Jones conceptualised as the “jagged edge” of justice in Wales. Despite not having a female prison, Wales has the third highest incarceration rate for women in western Europe.”