Debate contribution: Policing Resources

Debate contribution by Mr Patsy McGlone on 25 November 2025.

MLA

Mr Patsy McGlone

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

25 November 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Policing Resources

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5259171

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Molaim an rún

Go raibh maith agat, a Phríomh-Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

The SDLP has tabled the motion on policing resources because of our concerns about the impact of the consistent under-resourcing of policing. At the start of the debate, I wish to put on record my and my party's support for the police, and I thank those officers who work in often very difficult circumstances without the resources that they need and deserve to have available to them. In 1999, the Patten report stated that we needed a police service with 7,500 officers. At the start of October this year, almost 25 years since the establishment of the PSNI, there were only 6,223 full-time officers. In 2020, the parties in the Executive gave a commitment to increase the number of police officers to finally match the figure in that Patten report. However, sufficient additional funding was not provided to enable the target to be achieved, and, when numbers rose to a high of 7,100 officers, the additional funding that had been provided fell away and the additional police numbers fell away with it. It is not that efforts have not been made in the past; those efforts just have not been sustained. Overall, there has been long-term underfunding of the criminal justice system. That is the result of decisions made by successive DUP/Sinn Féin-led Executives over successive years, and, as a result of those decisions, the PSNI is under-resourced and the officers and staff are consistently under extraordinary pressure. Just over a year ago, the Assembly declared its support for the Chief Constable in his campaign to secure additional resources for the PSNI. The Assembly re-endorsed the recommendation in the Patten report that the number of full-time police officers should be 7,500, with the ambition of increasing that number. In January, the PSNI said that it needed £200 million over five years to increase its workforce to 7,000 officers from its current all-time low. That would still be 500 fewer than the Patten figure from 1999. To date, the Executive have given no firm commitments or guarantees that the required funding will be delivered or that the funding will be sustained over that five-year period. Indeed, funding has yet to be secured for the police pay award this year. The Treasury has repeatedly refused to pay the compensation bill for the PSNI officers who were affected by the major data breach in August 2023. We still await the legislative consent motion for the new legacy arrangement because of the additional cost to the Justice Minister's Department. While the Justice Minister has, unlike the Health Minister, ruled out overspending her budget, the Finance Minister predicted this week that the Executive will overspend their budget this year by £400 million. That is the background to the motion. Our motion also refers to the recent report from the Police Ombudsman on the handling of a high-profile child sex offender case. It is a disturbing report on a very disturbing case. The ombudsman's report found that the PSNI teams tasked with detecting and investigating online child sexual abuse were under-resourced and under pressure, which significantly compromised their ability to detect and prosecute offenders and keep children safe. In the case that was the subject of the ombudsman's report, the offender was first arrested in February 2016. He was interviewed by police and released on bail. It was more than two years later before he was interviewed again, in May 2018, about 1,100 indecent images of children being found on his phone and other devices, which had been seized in 2016. That delay was due to the time taken for the PSNI to produce evidential reports on the images. In those two years, he continued to engage in abusive online communications involving at least seven other children. He was on police bail throughout that time. He was arrested in March 2018, after the PSNI received information from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. By April 2019, he had been arrested for a third time, after Police Scotland alerted the PSNI to his consistent and continued offending. Reports on four devices seized in March 2018 had still not been completed when he was arrested for a fourth time, on 30 July 2019. Just five days before a police interview in May 2018, a 12-year-old girl whom he had targeted — Cimarron Thomas, from West Virginia in the United States — took her own life after he had contacted her. In January 2020, Cimarron's father, Benjamin Jay Thomas, also took his own life. Finally, in October 2024, the person responsible for those crimes was convicted and sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in prison. It is important to note that the ombudsman's investigation identified no misconduct whatsoever by any individual police officer. The ombudsman found that under-resourcing resulted in the delayed police enquiries and the ineffective management of the offender's bail conditions. The investigators found that there were significant pressures on the PSNI team responsible for investigating online offending involving children and indecent images. They found that sufficient investment was not allocated to reduce those investigative delays.

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

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:57 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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