Debate contribution: Criminal Justice (Sentencing etc.) Bill: Misogyny Aggravator
Debate contribution by Mrs Naomi Long on .
- MLA
- Mrs Naomi Long
- Party at the time
- Alliance Party
- Date
- 19 October 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Oral Answers to Questions
- Heading
- Criminal Justice (Sentencing etc.) Bill: Misogyny Aggravator
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5795878
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I encourage the Member not to feel obliged to add to or change the Bill. If it is OK, you can stick with it. I am looking across at her Committee colleague — he is a culprit in that respect too. You do not have to change it; you can scrutinise what is there and either agree or disagree it. When it comes to misogyny as an aggravator, the work on that simply has not been done, so we do not have the evidence base on which to proceed. We had a number of meetings here with various people from different jurisdictions who have considered whether misogyny should be a stand-alone issue within the hate crime Bill or whether sex already being a protected characteristic is sufficient. Whilst I understand the intent behind the inclusion of misogyny as a stand-alone aggravator, establishing proof that someone has committed a crime based on a hatred of women is much harder than making the case that somebody has committed a crime against a woman. That is always going to be the difficulty with hate crime, because you need to provide evidence beyond reasonable doubt of the motivation as well as of the crime itself. I am not opposed to the stand-alone aggravator in principle, but we need to do further work on that as a Department. There are a number of areas on which we said we would consult as part of the phase 2 consultation, and that is one of them. It would be better to wait until the phase 2 consultation is complete. At that stage, we will be in a better position, evidentially, to make a decision on whether it is required.
282 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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