Debate contribution: Justice Bill: Consideration Stage

Debate contribution by Mrs Naomi Long on 2 June 2026.

MLA

Mrs Naomi Long

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

2 June 2026

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Justice Bill: Consideration Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5584971

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I want to speak to the amendments in group 2 as they relate to the different Parts of the Bill. I will begin with amendment Nos 41 to 43, which were tabled by the Chair of the Committee for Justice. I am content to support the Committee's amendments, which introduce the inclusion of a child's vulnerabilities as a relevant consideration when the police or courts are taking a decision whether to release a child on bail or to impose bail conditions. Provisions in the Bill already introduce the need to take account of issues such as a child's age, maturity and understanding and their individual needs, but Committee members felt that, on the basis of written and oral evidence that they had received, consideration of vulnerabilities should also be included. I have no objection to that. I move on to clause 12. While I understand the rationale set out for amendment No 44, tabled by Mr Frew, Mr Bradley and Mr Kingston, which would align the lower age of youth custody and supervision orders with the minimum age of criminal responsibility in Northern Ireland, I cannot agree with it. The starting age for YCSOs was never intended to align with the minimum age of criminal responsibility. Children aged 13 and under are being removed from the scope of the new order deliberately, as we do not wish custody to be used for that younger age group for anything other than very serious offences. That is in line with the intended aims of the new legislative provisions to increase our compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and to make the use of custody for children a measure of last resort. We know that contact with the justice system generally is detrimental to children's longer-term outcomes and that that becomes progressively worse the further into the system a child goes. Therefore, keeping younger children out of custody and, instead, providing targeted support under community supervision is a better option. Where children under 14 commit serious offences that warrant significant custodial time, there are other sentencing options available to the judiciary without needing to rely on the new YCSO legislation. For example, there are custodial sentences covered under article 45 of the Criminal Justice (Children) (NI) Order 1998 for grave offences or the public protection sentences, such as extended or indeterminate custodial sentences, found in the Criminal Justice (Northern Ireland) Order 2008 for serious sexual or violent offences. During its development, we set a general expectation that the new order would apply to children aged 14 and above. The issue was publicly consulted on and received strong support. Likewise, the majority of commentators who gave evidence on the Bill either had no concerns about it or were fully supportive. It is clear from my Department's statistics that courts are not using custody as a sentencing option for younger children in any way, which is a positive position that we wish to maintain. To do as the Members have suggested would risk drawing more young people into the custodial justice system when the option of community orders is available for those who are under 14 years old. We are therefore legislating only for what happens in practice. That position has received considerable support. For those reasons, I oppose amendment No 44 and ask others to do so also.

I will now speak to amendment Nos 49 to 51, tabled by Ms Emma Sheerin, Ms Aoife Finnegan and Ms Ciara Ferguson. The amendments relate to clause 21, which deals with the use of live links by police for custody purposes. The proposed amendments all seek to impose conditions on the use of clause 21 that will be addressed by my Department through updates to PACE codes before the provisions are commenced. PACE codes support the exercise of police powers and set out safeguards for individuals. My officials will update the codes, primarily code C, to support the effective operation of the live links provisions and to ensure that they are fully embedded in the other safeguards and protections for those who are in custody. Work on the proposed updates has already commenced, and the Department will engage with the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Children's Commissioner on those provisions. The updates will then be published for consultation and brought to the Justice Committee for consideration before they are laid before the Assembly. That work will be taken forward as soon as possible after Royal Assent, and the live links provisions will not be commenced until the PACE code updates are in place. As the PACE codes are the most appropriate means of addressing the issues, rather than placing them in the Bill, and the most effective means of allowing us to keep up to date with developments in that space, given that they are secondary legislation and therefore allow us more flexibility in updating them, I will not support the amendments. Furthermore, as we will update the PACE codes only for live links, it will be much shorter than updates that the Committee has dealt with in the past. The next amendment in the group is No 52, tabled by the Chair of the Committee for Justice. It establishes a review mechanism on the operation of the live link provisions by the police. During Committee Stage, my officials advised the Committee that they did not consider the proposal for a review mechanism to report on the use of live links by the police to be strictly necessary, as there were already existing arrangements to monitor and review the use of live links in those circumstances. My officials also cautioned that sample size was likely to be small and any review would have to be conducted in a way that did not impose an undue burden on the PSNI. However, I recognise that there are possible benefits in carrying out a proportionate review to ensure that live links are used appropriately and effectively and to identify areas for improvement. I am therefore content to support the amendment on that basis. I will now address the amendments tabled in my name, amendment Nos 53 to 64, which allow for the greater use of live links in courts and tribunal settings. A great deal of the justice system currently relies on the live links provisions in the Coronavirus Act 2020, which require regular extension via secondary legislation. New primary legislation is required to retain the wider use of live links in courts and tribunals going forward. However, the proposed amendments do not simply replicate the provisions in the 2020 Act, which were brought forward at speed in response to a public health emergency, but aim to meet our longer-term needs for criminal and civil proceedings by repealing, replacing and updating the provisions in the Criminal Justice (Northern Ireland) Order 2004, the Criminal Justice (Northern Ireland) Order 2008 and the Justice Act (Northern Ireland) 2015, among others. They also reflect legislative developments in neighbouring jurisdictions that enable the conduct of more court and tribunal cases remotely using live links in those jurisdictions. A public consultation indicated almost unanimous support for retaining the facility for remote hearings through using live links, provided that — it is worth stressing — a court or tribunal considers that their use is in the interests of justice. To that end, the proposed new model is broadly similar in approach to the temporary provisions, as it is based on an interests-of-justice test. That will include a statutory duty that the court should have regard to any guidance issued by the Lady Chief Justice when determining the interests of justice; a requirement for the court or tribunal to hear the views of the parties and/or the witnesses on the matter of the use of live links for the hearing or part of a hearing to satisfy itself that live links enable the person giving evidence to see and hear all other persons who are participating in proceedings; provision to ensure that there is no diminution of current entitlements for vulnerable witnesses or defendants to enable their effective participation; a presumption that attendance will be by electronic means unless the court directs physical attendance in civil or criminal proceedings where the only party in a hearing or application is a public official; a power to make secondary legislation on the designation of expert witnesses, as the provisions in section 52 of the Justice Act (Northern Ireland) 2015 are to be replaced by the Bill; a power to vary, as well as rescind, a live link direction; and provision to ensure that the public can be enabled to see or hear proceedings if they are conducted wholly remotely or where there was identified, by a court or tribunal, a need to transmit the proceedings to another identified location in the interests of justice.

The same protection applies for the solemnity and integrity of proceedings whether a person is participating in person or remotely, including the prevention of unauthorised recording or transmitting of a live hearing, as well as unlawful interruption of that hearing. Finally, those attending remotely will be subject to the same requirements that their evidence be truthful, or they will be held to account for perjury, as would occur had they been present in a courtroom. Live links are a key element of the modernisation of courts and tribunals in Northern Ireland. The provisions will help to achieve digital strategy commitments. I therefore commend them to the House, as I said, on the strong basis that they are applied in the interests of justice. The last amendment that I wish to speak to as part of this group is amendment No 65, as tabled by Messrs Frew, Bradley and Kingston. It seeks to place a requirement on my Department to appoint a person to conduct a review of the operation of those live link arrangements within three years of the provisions becoming operational. There were a number of exchanges of correspondence with the Committee in that respect at Committee Stage, in which it was pointed out that the powers in the Coronavirus Act that facilitated the broader use of live links in courts and tribunals have been operational for six years and are now well established. The use of live links in those settings is already monitored and recorded by court staff. That information is available without the need for such a formal reporting requirement. It was further advised that the permanent legislative underpinning of the temporary live link powers in the Coronavirus Act represented only a small part of the wider provisions in those planned live link amendments. The greater proportion of powers in those amendments are measures to consolidate existing live link provisions that have been in operation since 2003 across several separate pieces of legislation. Given that the figures for the number of audio and visual connections for remote or hybrid hearings are published annually as part of the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service annual report and accounts and that those figures can be broken down on request, I wish to avoid any potential duplication of effort and requirements in that respect. At its meeting on 16 April 2026, the Committee for Justice considered that proposal, and its views were reported as follows:

"Members were content not to bring forward a Committee amendment to the Justice Bill to require the monitoring of the use of live links on courts and tribunals in order to avoid duplication of effort."

Given the Committee's lack of support for such an amendment, I remain of the view that an additional requirement to report on the operation of those long-standing and well-established provisions is not beneficial but may prove resource-intensive, given the potential for duplicate reporting. As such, I do not support the amendment tabled by Mr Frew, Mr Bradley and Mr Kingston. In closing, I thank all Members for the manner in which they have engaged in this Consideration Stage debate. It has been a productive and helpful one on the group 2 amendments. Although we will draw our remarks to a conclusion after the Committee Chair makes his winding-up speech on the debate, hopefully, Members will go home, read Hansard, cogitate on it and remember what we discussed today when it comes to voting next week. I fear that the distance between this debate and the votes on it is not particularly conducive to our remembering everything that has been discussed and the assurances that have been given. However, I trust that Members are so committed, given that they are still here at 8.40 pm, that they will, no doubt, be studying it avidly over the next few days.

2,112 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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