I WRITE in support of comments made by the Bishop of Worcester and Bishop for Prisons, the Rt Rev Dr Peter Selby, concerning Brockhill Prison.

Dr Selby is right to express concern that Brockhill, currently holding women inmates, is to be re-roled into a men's prison.

Women transferred from Brockhill to other jails will be held even further from their home areas.

Two-thirds of women prisoners are mothers and their children will find it even more difficult to visit.

Women will be further distanced from the community health and housing services they need to make contact with.

Your additional report ''All change at prison'' (June 4) includes comments from Gerry Sutcliffe, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Criminal Justice and Offender Management, who claims the prison is ''well equipped'' to meet the needs of male prisoners.

Mr Sutcliffe's comments are difficult to understand in the light of HM Chief Inspector of Prisons' report on Brockhill Prison. Anne Owers condemns the jail for its failure to provide in-cell toilets (The Guardian, June 1: ''End 'degrading' slopping out, says prisons watchdog'').

Women are subjected to the humiliation of using chamber pots in cells, with no sluices in landing recesses to deposit human waste. This is a breach of Article 3 (inhumane and degrading treatment), Human Rights Act 1998. The prison is not ''well equipped'', it is mediaeval and not fit to accommodate prisoners of either sex.

I write as the bereaved mother of Sarah Elizabeth Campbell, 18, who died in the ''care'' of HMP Styal, Cheshire, in 2003. In 2004, I organised and led the prison-death demonstrations outside HMP Brockhill following the tragic deaths of two young women, Sheena Kotecha, 22, and Kathryn Jones, 19.

A further 31 women have died in prisons in England (apparently self-inflicted deaths) since my daughter's death.

Labour cannot claim to be a Government basing its actions on principle and morality while this shameful state of affairs is allowed to continue.

PAULINE CAMPBELL

Malpas

Cheshire