Debate contribution: Justice Bill: Consideration Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Paul Givan on 15 June 2026.

MLA: Mr Paul Givan
Party at the time: Democratic Unionist Party
Date: 15 June 2026
Type: Debate contribution (made as a minister)
Business: Executive Committee Business
Heading: Justice Bill: Consideration Stage
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5615127

Text

I appreciate Mr Burrows giving way and commend him for the way that he has navigated things in his party.
He referred to the Jamie Bulger case, and I noted that, when the Alliance Party Member asked him to give way, Mr Tennyson did not talk about that case. The judge found that those children, at 10 years of age, had perfect competence to carry out a heinous crime and murder. The Member is more of an expert in the area than I am, so will he take time to walk Members through the nature of the crime and the judgement in respect of the ability of those children to have premeditated it and executed it in a way that merited that sentence so that people understand that, in extremity, we absolutely need to have the legislation and the criminal age of responsibility set at the current bar? That is why many of us decided that it would be inappropriate to have an amendment rushed through the Assembly in the way that that was being done. That is not the way to do things. Can he elaborate on that case?

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

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.

Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.14 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.81).
No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.

This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.

Jev’s structured answers

Probability that each statement is true of this text (0 = no, 1 = yes). A criterion counts as met at 0.60 or above.
Question	Probability	Met?
Identity framing	0.05	No
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.04	No
Cultural grievance politics	0.02	No
Dog-whistle messaging	0.09	No
Controversy escalation	0.10	No
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.81	Yes
Overall judgement	0.14	At or below not-flagging threshold

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing (chosen)	1.00
Reports or questions it	0.00
Criticises or condemns it	0.00
Adopts it	0.00

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
No identity-related subject	0.82
Sexism, misogyny, ageism and other equality groups	0.10
Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues	0.04
Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations	0.02
Legacy of the Troubles, victims and paramilitarism	0.01

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:57 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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