Debate contribution: Hate: Executive Approach

Debate contribution by Mrs Naomi Long on 22 September 2025.

MLA

Mrs Naomi Long

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

22 September 2025

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Hate: Executive Approach

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5124334

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am grateful to the leader of the Opposition for moving this important motion. In recent months, we have seen shameful acts of racist, sectarian, homophobic and transphobic intimidation and hate on our streets, targeting black and ethnic minorities, migrant workers, refugees, young families and vulnerable and defenceless individuals. I am clear that there can be no place for violence or the threat of violence, and that nor is there is any place for the rise in intimidating vigilantism and harassment that we have seen recently. Such hateful conduct not only damages the reputation of Northern Ireland as a welcoming and safe place to live, learn, work and visit, but the prejudice on which it is predicated is utterly corrosive to our ambition of building a truly shared, safe and inclusive future for all our people. Clearly, my Department and I have a key role to play, alongside justice partners, in addressing those issues, which is why I offered to respond today. However, that alone is not enough, nor can it protect people from harm, as many Members have recognised. A wider response across Departments and society is required to tackle the root causes of hate and prejudice in our communities, and to proactively invest in and promote inclusive, shared and vibrant communities. My Department is engaged in a wide range of work to support effective responses to hate-motivated attacks and to strengthen support for all victims of hate crime and those who fear that they may be vulnerable to attack, whether in the workplace, at home, in school or in the local community. In the previous mandate, I took forward the first stage of policy development and consultation to develop the legislative protections for victims of hate crime, with the intention of undertaking consultation on the remaining recommendations at the start of the new mandate, and bringing a consolidated hate crime Bill as the fourth Bill in this new mandate in 2026. That first stage covered the aggravation offence model and special measures for victims in court proceedings, as recommended by Judge Desmond Marrinan in his comprehensive review of hate crime legislation and his subsequent report, which was published in late 2020 and for which I remain very grateful. Like me, he has expressed disappointment at the pace of change, but he has recognised that the delay is not due to any lack of urgency on either my part or that of my Department but, rather, to the length of time that it takes to progress legislation through these institutions.

Contrast the time being taken by my Justice Bill, which has been with the Justice Committee for the past year, with the statutory 10 working days that MPs would have in Westminster for a similar Bill.

I will, yes.

It is a nice try, but I will respond to the Member in writing on that point. He has approached me on it in his role as party leader in the Assembly. Judge Marrinan also noted that the provisions that I am progressing in this mandate:

"will send a powerful message. I am certain it will have a profound impact."

Those were his words. On my return to office, it was clear that we could not introduce four or five Bills, as I had hoped to do, in four or five years. The intended hate crime Bill would have fallen owing to legislative time constraints and would have had to start again in the following mandate. Recognising the urgency of the problem, however, I prioritised delivering the most impactful recommendations on hate crime. They are being progressed through the Department and legislative drafting process and will be introduced via a sentencing Bill and the victims and witnesses of crime Bill. The statutory aggravator model, which will be included in the sentencing Bill, will become the core method of prosecuting hate crimes in Northern Ireland. It will allow all existing criminal offences to be aggravated by proven hostility based on membership or perceived membership of a protected group — race, religion, disability or sexual orientation — and will allow intersectionality to be recognised. It will also include a power to add further protected groups by way of secondary legislation, if the evidence shows that that is required. It is important to have that flexibility to respond. Additional support for victims and witnesses will be included in the victims and witnesses of crime Bill, which will include provisions to allow automatic eligibility for consideration of special measures and protection from in-person cross-examination by the defendant in hate crime cases. That staged approach means that hate crime provisions should be in place sooner than might otherwise have been possible, with, of course, the cooperation of the Committee and the Assembly. Strengthening hate crime legislation not only gives the police, the prosecution, the judiciary and others additional tools with which to ensure that the hate element of any crime is recognised and addressed in sentencing but, importantly, allows rehabilitation, whether by the probation service or by prisons, because, of course, not everyone will end up in prison, and the probation service does an excellent job. I keep hearing about people being behind bars, but maybe some people can be reformed without being put behind bars. It is therefore important that those services be able to address not only the signal offence but the underlying attitudes that were a driver for it. Perhaps equally powerfully, strengthening the legislation also sends a clear signal that hate crime is not tolerated by us as an Assembly. It supports an underlying commitment to valuing the diversity in all our communities across Northern Ireland, including newcomer and ethnic minority communities, LGBTQIA+ communities and people with disabilities. When it comes to supporting victims of hate crime, direct support is already provided through the Hate Crime Advocacy Service, which is jointly funded by the PSNI and DOJ. That service supports victims of hate crime through the criminal justice process, signposts them to relevant support services and can assist with third-party reporting to the PSNI. A range of measures is also in place to protect vulnerable groups from intimidation. My Department, together with the Northern Ireland Policing Board, provides annual funding to policing and community safety partnerships (PCSPs), and they play a key role in the Department's operational response to community safety concerns, including addressing hate crime. Following the incidents in Belfast in the summer of 2024, that joint committee provided a small additional award to the Belfast PCSP. As a result of the additional funding, over 20 grants were awarded to groups across the city during 2024-25, with the range of projects being supported including community engagement events; resources to encourage the reporting of hate crime; youth diversionary and education sessions; and cultural awareness and celebration events. Addressing the part of the motion that refers to tackling paramilitarism in Northern Ireland, I will say that my Department has committed to reviewing the Executive programme on paramilitarism and organised crime (EPPOC) in its entirety during 2026-27. That work is already in progress. The review will provide Ministers with an evidenced, fulsome assessment of the progress that has been made by the programme and of lessons learned. It will also help inform decision-making on the best method of systemically addressing the complex challenges of dealing with paramilitarism, organised crime and new and emerging threats in the longer term.

I am aware that the programme team has, on a number of occasions, offered to provide the SDLP representatives with a briefing on the programme but that that offer has not yet been taken up. If the leader of the Opposition and his colleagues would find it helpful, we are still happy to do that.

I also agree that it is vital to have an effective, responsive and visible criminal justice response to hate crime offences in Northern Ireland. Enhanced legislation is only one part of delivering that. However, I also recognise the importance of increasing resources across the criminal justice system to ensure a timely and effective response, which is crucial for building confidence. The matter is not solely for me but for the Executive as a whole to prioritise, and, while I agreed with much of the DUP's amendment, I was disappointed that, again, it is about the justice system funding itself. We have no means of doing so, and we need to get support from across the Executive. We have faced a squeeze that, by comparison, is disproportionate to that in other Departments, and it has impacted on every part of the system. I am focused on working with the Executive to redress the imbalance and to tackle some of the delays in the system through, for example, transformation funds, where my Department has been successful. I have continuously engaged with the Finance Minister and other Executive colleagues to advocate a better financial settlement for my Department, and I will continue to do so. The Executive commitment to specifically increasing police numbers is reflected, first, in its inclusion as a commitment in the Programme for Government and in the approval by my Department and the Department of Finance of the PSNI's workforce recovery business case and the prioritisation of the bid for year 1 funding in the forthcoming monitoring rounds. However, I have also been clear with colleagues that the stabilisation plan requires the full £200 million to be made available and that, without it, the value of single-year commitments is extremely limited. It is, therefore, vital that, in subsequent years, the business cases are supported. There is a five-year business case with three years of stabilisation and two further years to ensure that it beds in. It is important that that happen as part of the forthcoming three-year Budget process. During critical periods of unrest in August 2024 and June 2025, in response to the racist incidents and public disorder, DOJ activated established multi-agency strategic and operational mechanisms to address violence and racially motivated hate crimes and to offer support from the relevant agencies to members of the ethnic minority communities. Whilst there was an effective response to the initial disorder, I am clear that we now need a longer-term response to the ongoing emboldening of prejudiced attitudes and behaviours in wider society. The anti-migrant unrest and the attacks on black and minority ethnic people over the past year have impacted on families and communities in many ways. We have already reflected that the £5 million of resource that was diverted could have been better spent, frankly, on increasing police numbers or investing in communities. Healthcare workers have had their life disrupted, businesses have lost skilled staff who have returned to their home, people have been intimidated out of their home and children and adults are frightened to go to school or to work or to use public transport. Those are not acceptable behaviours, and I have been consistent in my advocacy of strengthening cross-departmental action to address racial inequality, prejudice and hate crime. There is no shortcut to tackling these complex issues. The starting point is for us to show strong political and community leadership that not only condemns without equivocation the marginalisation, dehumanisation, targeting and threatening of people because of who they are, where they are from or the colour of their skin but actively rejects and challenges anti-migrant sentiment, which is so often predicated on false narratives. We need to use the platform that we have to discuss the issues in a measured and considered manner so that it does not fuel and amplify those who are, without doubt, committed to racism and racial inequality. I also want to avoid the good immigrant/bad immigrant narrative: it is dangerous.

Sorry, I am short of time. The violence and the sentiments have been whipped up in places such as online spaces, and a lot of the riots were organised and orchestrated events. The people who are orchestrating the violence want no migration, legal or otherwise. They want no immigration. In many cases, they are white supremacists and white nationalists who are inflaming the situation online. If you read some of the stuff — I have to say that it comes not just from the UK and Ireland — you will see that, across the board, there is a strong white nationalist sentiment, and we should be concerned about that. No level of immigration will be acceptable to those people. That has also led to the affront of people who are here legitimately — I say "legitimately" because, if you are a refugee fleeing terror, you have a legitimate reason to be here, so it is not just those who have a visa but those who are applying for the regularisation of their position who are here legitimately — having to mark their home with their national flag to show which community they are from, sticking labels in their window that say, "I work in the NHS" or, "I'm employed in such-and-such a place". I drove through Ballymena. I know that you represent it and that you share my concern. It was biblical. It was like the Passover. People are marking their homes. People are afraid to go to the shops at the weekend without wearing their work clothes in case they are stopped and their papers are demanded, as though we are living in some Nazi state, by vigilantes who have no authority or right to harass those people. A lady who had just finished a 12-hour shift in a nursing home in my constituency was accosted on the Holywood Road and had her papers demanded by somebody who clearly had nothing better to do and was not in work themselves. We have to be clear, when we talk about legal and illegal migration, that it is for the Government to resolve. It is not for individuals on the street to take matters into their own hands by harassing people who have a right to be there. We have to challenge all forms of racism, sectarianism and hostility towards people from different backgrounds. I have been clear that that alone will not deliver change, but neither will Justice alone. A number of Departments have footprints in these issues, such as Communities for housing; Education for the integration of newcomers and school bullying; the Department of Health in ensuring that NHS workers are safe; and the Department for the Economy in encouraging employers and supporting them. All of those Departments and the Executive Office have a really significant role to play. I recognise that a statement issued with well-meaning, warm words will not solve the problem, but it is a start, and I want to see more action built on that. The first step forward is for us to find a consistent vision of what we want society to look like. For me, it is not one that is marked by that kind of hatred and division.

2,481 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:15 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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