Debate contribution: Child Protection Disclosure Scheme: Applications
Debate contribution by Mrs Naomi Long on .
- MLA
- Mrs Naomi Long
- Party at the time
- Alliance Party
- Date
- 10 November 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Oral Answers to Questions
- Heading
- Child Protection Disclosure Scheme: Applications
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5224621
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Home Office Ministers provide us with opportunities to further strengthen and streamline the current sex offender notification requirements by extending provisions proposed in the Crime and Policing Bill. As Members will appreciate, providing a consistent UK-wide approach to sex offender risk management is paramount to supporting wider public protection. I have secured the legislative consent of the Assembly for the greater part of the proposed provisions, for which I am grateful, and I intend to bring forward a further legislative consent motion (LCM) early in the new year to enable the introduction of some further provisions in Northern Ireland. Those include, for example, the need to notify a new name no less than seven days in advance of it being used; the requirement to notify at least 12 hours in advance before entering qualifying premises where children are present; and the requirement to seek the approval of the police to apply for certain identity replacement documents, if they are in a new name. Instead of the need to amend this by way of statutory rule, we are now looking at the list of prescribed police stations where an offender must notify and at the ability for notification to be given virtually in certain circumstances but only where particular conditions are met. We are doing all that with a focus on not only trying to streamline how we manage sex offenders but how we ensure that the public are fully protected. We are also looking at the ability of a police officer to consider whether relevant offenders should remain subject to indefinite notification requirements without the need for an application to be made from the relevant offender and at the ability for an application for a warrant for power of entry and search of an offender's home to be made by a court officer of at least the rank of inspector. Considerable work is ongoing in that space, because we will all agree that we want our children and, indeed, wider society to be properly protected from predators.
337 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.03 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.87).
- No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
- The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.
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
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.02 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.03 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.01 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.03 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.02 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.87 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.03 | At or below not-flagging threshold |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing (chosen) | 1.00 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.00 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.00 |
| Adopts it | 0.00 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-related subject | 0.56 |
| Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues | 0.32 |
| Another identity-related subject | 0.07 |
| Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials | 0.02 |
| Sexism, misogyny, ageism and other equality groups | 0.02 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:42 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
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