Debate contribution: Victims and Witnesses of Crime Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Brian Kingston on 30 June 2026.

MLA: Mr Brian Kingston
Party at the time: Democratic Unionist Party
Date: 30 June 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Executive Committee Business
Heading: Victims and Witnesses of Crime Bill: Second Stage
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5653501

Text

As a DUP member of the Justice Committee, I welcome the Victims and Witnesses of Crime Bill moving to Second Stage. As other Members have mentioned, we are currently handling three substantial Bills at Justice Committee: the Justice Bill, the amendments on which we completed voting on earlier today after seven days of debate; the Criminal Justice (Sentencing etc) Bill, for which we are currently engaging with witnesses at Committee; and now, this important Bill, which aims to strengthen support for victims and witnesses of crime. In particular, the Bill provides for the appointment and functions of the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses of Crime for Northern Ireland. The post has existed in designate form for four years, with Geraldine Hanna in post since 2022. We welcome the fact that, through the legislation, the post will be formally established and regulated. The principal aim of the commissioner is to promote the interests of victims and witnesses. The commissioner is intended to have a strategic role rather than to become involved in individual cases. Indeed, clause 8 states:
"The Commissioner may not exercise any function in relation to an individual case."
However, it adds that that:
"does not prevent the Commissioner considering individual cases and drawing conclusions about them for the purpose of ... considering a general issue."
That will be an important balance. The commissioner and their officials must be available to engage with victims and should listen to their concerns from a perspective of system-wide oversight.
We recognise, however, that the commissioner is not to be an appeal mechanism for when, for example, the outcome of a trial is considered to be unsatisfactory, such as when an unduly lenient sentence is handed down. There are separate mechanisms to deal with that, such as through the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and the Court of Appeal. The commissioner will be required to keep the operation and effectiveness of the Victim Charter and the Witness Charter under regular review. The Bill also seeks to strengthen special measures that relate to offences involving aggravation by hostility, which are commonly known as hate crimes. That ties in with the work that the Committee is already undertaking on the Criminal Justice (Sentencing etc) Bill. The special measures include ensuring that an alleged perpetrator is not allowed to cross-examine the victim of the alleged offence, including in sexual crime cases. We heard comments from the Sinn Féin Member for Mid Ulster in praise of her party's support for victims' human rights. If that is the case, perhaps her party will stop glorifying the actions of victim makers in the IRA, as it regularly does. Perhaps she can call on members of her party who have knowledge of acts of violence carried out by the IRA that created victims to come forward with that information. DUP Committee members will listen to the views and concerns of all those who attend the Committee's evidence sessions. We are aware that the trial process often focuses more on the defendant who is charged with an offence than it does on the victims of the alleged crime. Victims must be at the heart of the justice system, not peripheral to it. The commissioner must be a champion for victims and witnesses, and we will support the establishment of that post if it carries out that function.

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

Assessment

Flagged Legacy of the Troubles, victims and paramilitarism

Jev’s structured answers met every documented threshold for flagging as culture-war activity.

Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.50 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
Criteria met: Dog-whistle messaging (0.77).
Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.75).
The text adopts the identity-based framing in its own voice (0.92).
Subject area: Legacy of the Troubles, victims and paramilitarism.
The text adopts an antagonistic or dog-whistle framing, which is flagged even alongside legitimate scrutiny.

What a flag means. A flag means the activity contains at least one instance of culture-war framing that met the published test. It does not mean the whole activity is divisive, or that its substantive arguments are wrong.

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	0.14	No
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.43	No
Cultural grievance politics	0.06	No
Dog-whistle messaging	0.77	Yes
Controversy escalation	0.57	No
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.75	Yes
Overall judgement	0.50	Between thresholds

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing	0.04
Reports or questions it	0.00
Criticises or condemns it	0.04
Adopts it (chosen)	0.92

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
Legacy of the Troubles, victims and paramilitarism	0.84
Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations	0.16
No identity-related subject	0.00
Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials	0.00
Parades, bonfires and commemorations	0.00

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 16:11 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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