All of Mrs Naomi Long’s imported questions, contributions and motions in this mandate, newest first, including those assessed as not flagged, uncertain or not yet analysed.
The PPS has reviewed and will continue to review cases based on the needs of victims and witnesses. That will change over time, as new issues and new vulnerabilities emerge. What is critical, and what informed my decision to commence the accelerated review, is that the PPS will now have sole responsibility for…
I have not informed the Chamber of that, because it is factually inaccurate. It is true to say that the offer of an accelerated review was contingent on a return to work, but that was rejected out of hand by the CBA. The only red line that I have had in this process is that the CBA would no longer decide which cases…
Given the resources that are available to the Department, the truth is that there is very little by way of contingency measures that we can put in place to secure recovery of the backlog. When we met before, and I addressed the issues, I made the point that the money that is being spent on, for example, the…
The Member is right. There have been some fairly horrific cases that have been released only one at a time thus far. I do not think that any of us believes that that is fair on all the other cases that are in the queue or helpful for speeding up justice, which is something that we are all committed to seeing happen.…
In my original answer, I set out exactly what we are doing to try to resolve the dispute, and we have invested heavily in that accelerated review. That is proceeding with the agreement of the CBA, the SCBA and others who are party to the issue. I am afraid that I cannot provide the Member with a timeline, because it…
With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will address questions 3 and 11 together as they speak to the same issue. As I have said many times, the impact of the CBA service withdrawal is significant, and it will resonate for some time and cause further delays in the system. According to our most recent data, 965 cases have…
Twenty-eight domestic homicide reviews have been commissioned, and seven have been completed and published on the DOJ website. Learning from those has driven significant improvements across agencies. The Department continues to embed that learning in its practice. In response to identified learning, we have also…
There are two separate issues. The first is whether there is the capacity in the Department to undertake the scoping exercise itself, because that would be an extensive piece of work. Obviously, the Member is aware of the constrained nature of the resources within which I have to operate. Furthermore, the domestic…
I remain committed to exploring whether the domestic homicide review model can be widened to include domestic abuse-related deaths by suicide. Our initial assessment, which has been informed by the experience in England and Wales, indicates that significant additional investment from the Executive and relevant…
Legislative Consent Motion: Crime and Policing Bill That this Assembly endorses the principle of the extension to Northern Ireland of the provisions of the Crime and Policing Bill, introduced as amendments in the House of Lords, dealing with powers to strengthen age verification requirements for on-line sale and…
I beg to introduce the Criminal Justice (Sentencing etc) Bill [NIA 26/22-27], which is a Bill to make provision about the exercise of the court’s discretion when sentencing; to make provision about the availability and effect of suspended sentence orders; to create general principles relating to the determination of…
I plan to introduce legislation later this year to commence section 46 of the Offensive Weapons Act 2019, which will amend section 114 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 to make it an offence to possess in private any weapon listed in the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) Order 1988. The possession of such…
Our officials have ongoing contact on the issue. However, we made a joint visit to the Rowan centre and had a conversation about the potential for a Barnahus. Obviously, the Rowan centre gives an example of that wrap-around care for adults, but other therapeutic interventions would be required for Barnahus. Remember…
I shall have to revert to the Member about the detailed timeline. I have not received it as yet, but I am aware that officials have been working on it. As I said earlier, there are significant challenges in the work being done by the team who have been involved with the Gillen review. We have made significant progress…
I set that out in more detail, if you want to read some of the stuff that I said at Committee last week, but, basically, PSNI has informed us that there will be no gaps in legislation as a result of the repeal of vagrancy laws other than simple begging. If somebody is simply asking for money, that would be the only…
As I stated earlier, I have written to Executive colleagues, because we had drafted the repeal of vagrancy laws as part of the sentencing Bill. I initially received reasonably positive responses, but, towards the end of the process, I received a negative response from the Member's colleagues. It was agreed at…
There may well be, but it is not for me to tell the Minister for Infrastructure what she would need to do to raise awareness. That is not a role for me as Minister of Justice.
The policy issue is for the Department for Infrastructure, not the Department of Justice. Roads legislation is not a matter for me. If the Minister for Infrastructure wishes to talk to the Chief Constable about the issue, it is entirely appropriate that she does. As with all roads enforcement, the PSNI will enforce…
Let me say a couple of things. First, the care of prisoners' health is a matter not for the Northern Ireland Prison Service but for the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust. It takes care of prisoners' health. Maybe the Member would prefer that, instead of ensuring that those people get the right psychological…
I can give one example, if it would be helpful. The staff complement for our arm's-length bodies (ALBs) has dropped significantly over the past four to five years. I could contrast that with, for example, the Department of Education, where the complement of officials has risen almost exponentially in the same period.…
The new agreement will be the three legs of the stool: we will all have to agree to it. We are doing that work. The Member may chuckle, but, as he will recognise, there have been real pressures in the policing sector. I have a small team of people in support branch to take forward all of that work, whether it be work…
The Department has already been responding to it. We have had a series of tripartite meetings over the past year in which a number of the matters that were raised in the review have been resolved between the board, the Chief Constable and the Department. Some of that was for the board to take forward; some of it was…
I can hold up as an example the work that we did with the sexual offences legal advisers (SOLAs) and the children's sexual offences legal advisers (CSOLAs). This time last year, I was able to roll that out to children as well as adults. We set aside a budget for that. It is a pilot that will be assessed. I cannot talk…
We have raised a number of issues not just this year but every year. Many of those span more than a single calendar year or financial year. It is important that we change the culture not just in the justice system but in our society. The work that I am doing to ensure that things such as strangulation and suffocation…