Debate contribution: Justice Bill: Consideration Stage

Debate contribution by Ms Emma Sheerin on 2 June 2026.

MLA

Ms Emma Sheerin

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

2 June 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Justice Bill: Consideration Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5584418

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I am here to eat my words after being over-ambitious about being finished before lunchtime, having preached to Paul all week about the length of time that we take to speak. That is a bit of a lesson for me. I will return to what we were talking about prior to Question Time and the break for lunch: the Minister's response on the retention of biometric data for under-18s. I refer to what we heard in the wake of the Marper judgement from the Human Rights Commission, which stated clearly:

"the evidence tells us that there is a stigmatising ill-effect on individuals, especially children, when their data is held; and that research tells us that, once a child is in the criminal justice system, it almost sets them on a path, as such, and we should be ensuring that the path to criminalisation is kept at a minimum. We need to adopt a child-centred approach to this whole area."

That goes to the heart of what our amendments to the Bill try to do. We want to have a compassionate approach, particularly to children and young people. In other parts of the Bill and in a number of proposed amendments, children and young people are treated differently to adults. Our youth justice system should be based on principles of rehabilitation rather than punitive punishment. That is what our amendments seek to do. The threshold for retaining a child's biometric data should be markedly higher than that applied to adults and that the Assembly should be cautious about creating a system in which children who have committed minor offences, or who have not been convicted at all, can have biometric data retained by the state. We do not want to criminalise our young people and entrench them into that justice system that then, as the evidence tells us, leads to higher likelihood of reoffending. I refer briefly to our neighbours in Scotland, who have considered the issue and adopted a different model from the one that we are on the path to adopting here in the North, as set out in the code of practice for the Scottish Biometrics Commissioner. In Scotland, biometric data for under-18s is only captured and retained for those arrested for violent or sexual offences, or otherwise by exception. Since that model was adopted in 2024, there has been a significant decrease in the number of children who have had their biometric data retained. The Scottish Biometrics Commissioner has stated that the outcome of that policy change:

“better reflects the interests of children and the policy position in Scotland via incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child”.

Again, that goes to the heart of what we are trying to do here, which is to prioritise human rights, particularly the human rights of children. The Bill as drafted includes shorter retention periods for under-18s than for adults, and we welcome that to some extent, but we support the Scottish approach whereby a child's data can be retained for only three years unless the police apply for and are granted an extension of two years by the court. In answer to Mr Frew's request for clarification, there is no limit on the number of applications for extension that can be granted, so the retention period is not capped at seven years. I know that, in introducing the Bill, the Minister has a commitment to strengthening legislative provisions for children. Our proposals better reflect the provisions contained in the Justice Act 2002 that mean that the best interests of children must be the primary consideration for all public bodies, and I hope to see support for them across the House. Those specific proposals are reflected in our amendments, and I ask people to support amendment Nos 11, 12, 13, 23 and 24. I turn to the independence of the biometrics commissioner, which we touched on earlier. A focus of the Marper judgement was the absence of a robust process to review the need to continue to retain DNA and fingerprints. I do not think that the concerns that were outlined in that judgement have been addressed yet. At Second Stage, Members raised the point in the Chamber that they were greatly concerned about the volume of proposed amendments that related to provisions that were not in the Bill from the beginning. We require clarity on exactly how the new proposals for a biometrics commissioner will work. You will understand my concern that the Bill sets out a skeleton framework for appeals and oversight mechanisms, with the Department stating that the regulations on the review, including the statutory review dates, will be subject to public consultation and then considered by the Assembly. Under the framework in the Bill, an individual has the right to ask the PSNI to conduct a review, which would then be conducted by a designated PSNI review team. Where an individual is unhappy with its decision, they have the right to appeal it and can ask the PSNI to reconsider their request. That appeal would be carried out by a more senior PSNI officer. We have concerns that that looks like the PSNI marking its own homework, so to speak. Law enforcement agencies would want to hold on to that data for as long as possible, but it is up to us as legislators to ensure that safeguards are in place to protect individuals' rights. I thank the Minister's team for being so open to conversations with us when we sought clarity on those proposals. In our engagements with the Department, we were told that the PSNI is the data owner and that it is for the PSNI to determine whether there is a policing need to continue to retain a person's material, which, again, reflects our earlier conversations about the PSNI requiring that data for future investigations. We have serious concerns that that misses the point. The PSNI does not own the data. Biometric data is highly personal, and it belongs to the individual in question. That right must be protected. We agree with the Department that the biometrics commissioner should be the ultimate authority in deciding the outcome of an appeal and that that should be out of the hands of the PSNI. We argue that it should not be via a complaints mechanism, as the Minister proposed, but via a direct case-handling function. We ask Members to support amendment Nos 29 and 32, which achieve that aim by removing the PSNI as the ultimate decision-making authority so that it does not mark its own homework and by ensuring that there is an individual with the necessary independence to carry out reviews on the basis of proportionality, fairness and rights. Again, we can look to the Scottish model to see how the Scottish Biometrics Commissioner is answerable to the whole Scottish Parliament, not to one political advocate as such. Moving on to my next point —.

Yes. Lean ar aghaidh.

I thank the Minister for her intervention. In my earlier remarks, I said that our key concern was around the fact that the biometrics commissioner — we teased it out in Committee sessions — is, ultimately, answerable to the PSNI. The Law Society's advice was that it would be helpful to refer to the Scottish model and how the Scottish Biometrics Commissioner handles the data.

Yes.

1,226 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:45 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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