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A new “women’s justice board” will be set up to cut the female prison population in England and Wales as part of a longer-term push to reduce the number of women’s jails, the justice secretary has said.

In a speech to the Labour party conference in Liverpool on Tuesday, Shabana Mahmood rejected then Conservative home secretary Michael Howard’s 1993 declaration that “prison works”, saying that “for women prison isn’t working”.

Labour has said it inherited a criminal justice system at “breaking point” when it won the general election in July, and in her first 10 weeks in office Mahmood has faced record jail overcrowding, which saw the prison estate come to within a few hundred places of capacity.

Almost 2,000 prisoners were released early this month, with several thousand more to be let out in October, under temporary emergency measures reducing the proportion of some custodial sentences from 50 per cent to 40 per cent.  

Mahmood in her speech accused “guilty men in the last government” of bringing the prison system “to the point of disaster”.

The new women’s justice board would be tasked with providing early interventions to divert women away from the criminal justice system, improving community support and looking at specific problems affecting young women in custody, she said.

The self-harm rate among female inmates is eight times higher than among men, and women between the ages of 18 and 24 account for more than one-third of incidents despite constituting less than 10 per cent of the female prison population.

Some 3,453 women were in prison in England and Wales as of last Friday, according to Ministry of Justice figures, compared with 82,953 male inmates.

There are 123 jails in England and Wales, according to HM Prison Service, of which 12 in England are for women. Mahmood described them as “desperate places” that led female offenders into a life of crime rather than helping them rehabilitate.

About two-thirds of female offenders sentenced to prison did not commit a violent crime, and more than half of female offenders were the victims of domestic abuse, the department said in a release announcing Mahmood’s planned reforms.

The MoJ said women serving short custodial sentences were “significantly more likely to reoffend” than those serving non-custodial sentences.

The new body would be led by a minister and set up in the MoJ, the department added.

Pia Sinha, chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust charity, welcomed the creation of a separate oversight board for female offenders as a “historic moment for women’s justice”.

“Many women are primary carers for children, which means prison can have a devastating impact on those left behind on the outside as well as on the women themselves,” she said.

Sinha added that for the women’s justice board to be effective it “must provide a framework for better use of liaison and diversion services and community alternatives for women”.

Mahmood also pledged to make progress on Labour’s manifesto pledge to give all rape victims access to an independent legal advocate representing them “rather than a defendant or prosecutor”.

The change is aimed at cutting the number of victims who drop out of rape cases — 60 per cent at present — before they go to trial.   

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Within two weeks of Hamas’s October 7 attack, US President Joe Biden flew into Tel Aviv to show his support to Israel, telling the traumatised nation that America “will not let you ever be alone”.

But he also had words of caution, warning Israel not to be consumed by “rage” and repeat the US’s mistakes after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The inference, as Israel launched a thunderous offensive against Hamas in Gaza, was clear: do not get drawn into years-long wars as the US did in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet for almost a year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has persistently rebuffed the advice of his nation’s most important ally at a time of deepening regional crisis.

Israel is still fighting in Gaza, while dramatically ramping up its assault against Hizbollah, the Iranian-backed militant movement in Lebanon. On Monday, Israel’s largest air assault on Lebanon in decades killed more than 500 people, a dramatic escalation that edges the Middle East closer to the all-out, multi-front war the US has spent months trying to prevent.

For many, it underlines how Biden, a self-avowed Zionist, is unwilling to use Washington’s leverage over Israel both because of his emotional attachment to Israel and domestic political calculations.

“If you look at what Netanyahu has done over the course of the last year, it’s [to] prioritise his own calculations about what was best for either him or the state of Israel . . . regardless of what the US suggested,” said Steven Cook at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Netanyahu is going to do what Netanyahu is going to do. He’s going to move the goalposts and rope-a-dope Biden.”

The US initially convinced Netanyahu’s far-right government not to launch a pre-emptive offensive against Hizbollah shortly after it began firing rockets at Israel on October 8. But in the months since Israel and Hizbollah have exchanged intensifying fire as the US sought to broker a deal to end the hostilities.

That diplomatic push depends on the success of US-led efforts to secure a ceasefire and the release of hostages in Gaza, as Hizbollah insists it will continue striking Israel as long as the war in the Palestinian strip continues.

Yet Netanyahu has shown little appetite for a ceasefire in Gaza, instead insisting on “total victory” against Hamas and now launching a “new phase” of the war against Hizbollah. “We are not waiting for the threat, we are pre-empting it — everywhere,” Netanyahu said on Monday.

When he has come under pressure from the US and Israel’s other western allies, Netanyahu has sought to exploit it to his own political advantage, telling Israelis that he is defying global powers to pursue Israel’s war goals.

All the while, Biden has made it clear that he does not want to use his main points of leverage — withholding US military aid or assistance. The one time he did suspend an arms shipment, it was for a batch of 2,000lbs bombs in early May as Netanyahu insisted on launching an offensive on Rafah, the southern Gazan city where more than 1mn Palestinians had sought sanctuary.

The US, other western powers and UN agencies warned about the dire impact such a military operation would have on Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, but Israel went ahead and had seized control of Rafah by the end of the month.

There have been other moments when Biden has expressed his frustration with Netanyahu’s conduct of the war.

Six months before the Rafah offensive he warned that Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza risked leaving the country isolated and said Netanyahu “has to change”. The Biden administration has also for months pressed Israel, with limited success, to improve the delivery of aid to Gaza, amid warnings about the threat of famine and widespread disease in the besieged strip.

This month, when Biden was asked if Netanyahu was doing enough to reach a ceasefire with Hamas he replied with a blunt “no”.

Yet he also repeatedly reiterates the US’s “ironclad” commitment to Israel’s defence. The US has provided Netanyahu’s government with more than $12.5bn in military assistance since October 7, and on Monday said it was deploying additional troops to the region to act as a deterrent and defend Israel.

Michael Wahid Hanna, US programme director at Crisis Group, said those running the administration’s policy have never been interested in “strong-arming” Israel into a ceasefire deal.

Biden could be using arms sales, the UN Security Council and diplomatic support for Israel to pressure Netanyahu, he said. But with US elections just over a month away, “it’s hard to imagine an American administration courting that level of diplomatic friction with Israel”.

While Biden, and vice-president Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, risk losing support from Americans who oppose Israel’s military action, they also risk alienating pro-Israeli voters. Yet a spiralling conflict in the Middle East could also damage Harris’s election campaign, particularly if US troops are drawn into combat.

“There are huge potential downside risks to the Harris campaign from an all-out war,” Hanna said. “[Donald] Trump has talked a lot about the chaos that has happened under the administration . . . It will be a theme in the coming days that ‘this is a reflection of American weakness.’”

One former western intelligence official said the Israeli escalation gives Netanyahu an “opportunity to make life difficult for the Biden administration”, in the belief that a Trump victory would best serve Netanyahu’s interests.

“If he could be the source of the October surprise that gives Trump an opportunity to come back, then he’d be very happy to do that,” the official said.

Even some administration officials privately lament that there is little Washington can do to influence Israel’s behaviour so long as Biden refrains from using American leverage with military sales.

But Biden, and many in his administration, consider defending Israel as fundamentally important to American security, and worry that withholding weapons or publicly criticising Israel would send the wrong signal to Iran and its proxies. They add that much of the world overstates how much sway Washington has over Israel.

Privately they worry that Israel’s surge of attacks against Hizbollah could spiral out of control, even if Israel has indicated to them it doesn’t want a ground invasion. But some in the administration agree with Netanyahu’s ostensible logic of escalating to de-escalate, particularly when it involves Hizbollah and its patron Iran.

After Israel’s wave of strikes struck Lebanon on Monday, Biden said his “team had been in constant contact with their counterparts, and we’re working to de-escalate in a way that allows people [displaced Israelis] to return to their homes safely”.

Brett McGurk, Biden’s Middle East adviser, said last week that Washington had disagreements with the Israelis “on tactics” and “escalation risk” but added he was “confident that through diplomacy, through deterrence and other means, we’ll work our way out of it”.

But Hanna said that the administration was taking a “big roll of the dice that the US is not in control of”.

“And that’s a particularly dangerous place to be,” he said. “In terms of what that might mean for US engagement and more direct military conflict; what it might mean for regional stability, American standing, politics and legacy.”

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Sir Keir Starmer has said the UK government is “unashamed to partner with the private sector” in a set-piece speech that sought to boost flagging confidence in the British economy and his administration.

In his first address as prime minister to the Labour party conference in Liverpool on Tuesday, Starmer said he was willing to make “unpopular” decisions, but added he knew that people wanted “respite and relief” amid a cost of living crisis.

Starmer is contending with falling poll ratings and dissatisfaction within the party about the government’s “gloomy” outlook as it seeks to fill what it says is a £22bn “black hole” in public finances.

The prime minister argued that tough government decisions now would allow Britain “much more quickly” to access the “light at the end of this tunnel”, as he promised that the cost of filling the hole in the public finances would be “shared fairly”.

He added that confidence in the country was “brittle and fragile” and had to be restored, as he promised “national renewal”.

He added: “But the cost of filling that black hole in our public finances that will be shared fairly.”

Depicting his government as unashamed to work closely with the private sector to level up the country, Starmer said that Labour should be “proud to be the party of wealth creation”.

He said the government would give businesses more flexibility to adapt to the skills needs of employers through new “foundation apprenticeships” to give young people a way into work. 

He also announced that GB Energy, the new state-owned group intended to spearhead the transition to cleaner energy, would be headquartered in Aberdeen, a city set to be hit by Labour’s moves to curb offshore oil and gas extraction.

Speaking before he travels to New York to attend the UN General Assembly, Starmer urged “all parties to pull back from the brink” in the Middle East.

This is a developing story