Debate contribution: Justice Bill: Consideration Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 2 June 2026.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

2 June 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Justice Bill: Consideration Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5584561

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I appreciate the Minister's giving us that information. While I think that the concern about independence remains, I appreciate that information. I also ask whether the commissioner will be given the remit to keep the whole retention regime, including looking at a future photographs and facial recognition framework, under meaningful review. The Committee was right to be alarmed that Part 1 has no commencement time frame. It wants to insert a five-year backstop. Every day that the old indefinite regime stays in force is another day that the state is doing to people exactly what the courts told it to stop doing. I press the Minister to move this at speed. In summary, my party and I will support moving away from indefinite retention because the current law is an ongoing breach of people's rights, and that has to end. However, we have serious concerns that the photographs power is a surveillance framework that is being smuggled in through the back door, with the promise to fill in the detail later.

A case-by-case model is the preferred model. The current one is too blanket. The Minister should look at a case-by-case model to explore what the best options are. That would be a better preferred model in a general sense, rather than any prescriptive model that I could give on my feet here.

I will move on to my own amendment No 38. It is based on quite a simple idea, which is that, if the state is to take a person's DNA or fingerprints and hold them on a police database for years or decades, the least that it can do is tell that person the truth about what it is doing. The amendment simply says that, when your biometric material is taken, you are handed, in writing, five plain facts. There is nothing groundbreaking here. Those facts are: the legal basis on which your data is taken, how long it can be kept, when it must be destroyed, what your rights are and how you can find out more about it. It also says that, if any of that changes later — say, if the clock is reset on the retention period because you are charged or convicted, or because a national security determination is made — you are told in writing as soon as possible. We are rightly debating amendments to give people the right to review their retained material and the right to ask for confirmation that their data has been destroyed. Those are obviously welcome and important amendments. However, I say to Members that a right that you have never been told about is not really a right in anybody's definition. You cannot appeal a decision that you do not know was taken. You cannot ask for your DNA to be deleted if you do not know that it is still being held. Amendment No 38 makes all those other protections actually work, because it puts the information in the citizen's hands rather than leaving it locked inside a PSNI computer or database somewhere. The presumption of innocence should, at the very least, mean that an innocent person is told that the state is holding their DNA and why. Working-class communities that have lived under the eye of the state for generations know exactly what it is like to be watched, stopped, photographed and recorded. For people whom I represent in West Belfast, the principle that you have the right to know what the state holds on you is extremely important indeed. That is the bare minimum that a person is owed when the state takes parts of their body and keeps that. For that reason, I ask all Members to support the amendment. To return to the Minister's questions earlier about my amendment, from my understanding of her intervention, the Minister said that that would be covered in the PACE code. If she and other Members have no issue with the principle of and intent behind the amendment, there should be no issue with putting it through and putting it in the Bill.

I will.

I appreciate that, Minister, but I say, respectfully, that it is not the Minister's role to say whether amendments are legislatively competent or not. I think that this one is, and I would —.

That is your opinion. That is fair enough, but there is a

There is an opportunity to put data transparency and accountability in the Bill rather than wait years — that is my concern — for the PACE codes of practice to be updated, if they eventually are at all. People who agree with and stand by those principles should vote for the amendment. Regarding the possibility of legislative incompetence, I dispute the Minister's assertion that it is not competent. The amendment is about the responsible officer providing written notice when a national security determination status changes. It is not about changing that status or interfering with reserved matters. It is about responding to changes in status with relevant written information. That is what is stated in the amendment, and I urge Members to back that amendment.

852 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:46 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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