Debate contribution: Sectarian and Racist Intimidation

Debate contribution by Mr Jon Burrows on 16 September 2025.

MLA: Mr Jon Burrows
Party at the time: Ulster Unionist Party
Date: 16 September 2025
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Private Members' Business
Heading: Sectarian and Racist Intimidation
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5111853

Text

It is good to support the motion, and it is good to hear unequivocal support for it from across the Chamber. Any conversation on the issue should begin with unequivocal and unreserved condemnation of violence. I will use a phrase that the Members for Foyle will be familiar with, because we used to use it when I worked with them up in Londonderry/Derry, whatever you want to call it, and that is: "An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us". That is a really good phrase that unified our response to any attacks, because no matter who you are, violence against you is wrong. That is a red line that we should all agree with. Of course, condemning such attacks is not enough in itself. The word that jumps out at me in the motion is "strategy". People up and down the country grimace when they hear that dreaded word, "strategy", because there are so many strategies, but they are never delivered on. What I will say about the strategy and the words about bringing people to justice is that the people in the Chamber are responsible for running down our Police Service. Today, I typed an email to the police about a victim of hate crime in Ballymena. There was no result from the investigation. It was conducted by a response constable who does 24/7 response policing — they get in their car and drive to the next incident. I can guarantee you that the level of investigation into that hate crime was far inferior to what was done 10 years ago when, for example, I was the area commander in Derry. I would have had a detective dealing with that, but we do not have detectives any more to deal with such crimes, so we do not solve them. All the really advanced investigative work that you can do is not done, because cuts have consequences. The fact that we have demoralised and not funded our Police Service has a —
Thank you for that. It sounds lovely to say, "I wish that there was never any hate crime". I wish that there was no crime whatsoever, because we would not need our Police Service. We could close down the prisons. We could close down half the hospitals because I have wished that there be no disease. It is a meaningless statement.
It is not; it is a distraction.
The reality is that there will always be a level of crime. There is always crime.
Yes, you can.
Thank you. We need to invest in our Police Service. I also fear that we are going to undermine attempts to bring cohesion in how the justice system deals with those who commit hate crimes. We are walking ourselves into a two-tier policing scenario, and I will tell you why. It is because the Justice Minister is bringing in extra penalties for hate crime — that is a strategy that I welcome — but, at the same time, is decreasing the penalties for ordinary crime. The difficulty with that is —.
OK. I will come back. Let me move on to our language about immigration. When we do not articulate things, we vacate the space that is then occupied by the far right. We need to show the language of leadership and discuss the issues that people have. One thing is to value legal immigration. I keep repeating it, but, in the last years of her life, my granny was cared for by Filipino nurses. We rely on them. People in north Antrim who love their meat would be vegan if it were not for foreign nationals. We rely on them, and we should value them. That is a key part of the strategy. The next point is that illegal immigration is a law-and-order issue. If we do not articulate the problems with asylum — the fact that the system is so slow, and the fact that there is an affront to the rule of law with people getting off a dinghy and coming into the United Kingdom — those things cause the toxification of relationships that feeds the far right. When we do not talk about those issues, we give the space to the likes of Tommy Robinson, who can send a tweet and get tens of thousands of people to support him. In our language, we need to occupy and elevate the space of talking about public policy issues, while starting that by saying that violence is always wrong. I call for the police to release images, but, in this motion, we talk a lot about sectarian and racist violence. I released images of people engaged in sectarian crimes, and I had condemnation from parties in the House, so we need to be consistent. That is my take on it. I fully support the motion. Let us have honest conversations, and let us stand by and build up our justice system so that we can bring people to justice and start preventing things.

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

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