Debate contribution: Inquiry (Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses) and Redress Scheme Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Stewart Dickson on 24 June 2025.

MLA

Mr Stewart Dickson

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

24 June 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Inquiry (Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses) and Redress Scheme Bill: Second Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5046692

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I start by recognising that, at the very heart of the Bill, for my party and me, are the victims and survivors and their families, who are watching the debate. The Bill is long overdue, but it finally sets in motion a statutory inquiry into what happened in mother-and-baby institutions, Magdalene laundries and workhouses and begins the process of redress. The Bill is not perfect — I will come to that later in my comments — but it does do something very important: it tells us that what happened matters, that people's pain matters and that the institutions and the state can no longer hide behind silence. As a member of the Committee for the Executive Office who is speaking on behalf of the Alliance Party, I am here to support the Bill's moving to its Committee Stage so that we can make it better. Survivors deserve more than words: they deserve action. That means that we have to get the legislation right. The Bill does some good things. It sets up an inquiry with proper powers to compel document delivery, call witnesses and uncover the truth. It starts a redress process, which, as we have heard, includes a standardised payment of £10,000 for each eligible survivor and of £2,000 for a qualifying relative where a survivor has passed since 2011. It commits to a further, individually assessed scheme to look at specific harms. It also creates a redress service to oversee that work. Let us be honest, however: many major concerns remain. As other Members have said, the 2011 cut-off date for posthumous claims is plain wrong. Families who lost loved ones before that arbitrary date are being told that they do not count. That is not justice but hard-hearted, cold bureaucracy, and that date needs to, and must, be changed. We have also heard that £10,000 is not enough. As others have said in the House today, that is the figure that was used for the victims of historical institutional abuse some five years ago. With inflation, it is worth even less today. Yes, it is a start, but, if we are to be honest about the scale of suffering endured, we know that it simply does not go far enough. The scheme is based on admissions, not on what happened to people once they were inside the system. That leaves out too much. For the women and girls who were subjected to forced labour, for the children who were separated from their mothers and for the survivors of abuse, the scheme risks being seen as being tokenistic. The second scheme, which is one for individual harm —.

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

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:52 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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