Debate contribution: Policing Resources

Debate contribution by Mrs Naomi Long on 25 November 2025.

MLA

Mrs Naomi Long

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

25 November 2025

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Policing Resources

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5259255

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. It is not every debate in the Chamber that I wish could last longer. The issues that have been raised in the debate actually require more detailed interventions and expression, because they are really important. I apologise that I will not be able to respond to each Member's contribution, but I thank them because, on the whole, they were really helpful. I begin by acknowledging the serious findings of the Police Ombudsman on the PSNI's handling of the offending activities of Alexander McCartney between January 2016 and March 2019. His actions were abhorrent, and my thoughts and sympathies remain with the victims and their families, who have endured unimaginable trauma. I also acknowledge, however, the dedication and professionalism of the PSNI officers who pursued McCartney and pursue other predators, secure the evidence and ensure that those predators face justice for their despicable crimes. Those officers' work protects children, disrupts abusers and demonstrates the very best of policing, even under significant pressure. The ombudsman's report found failings that have to be addressed, but it did not find that police officers were failing. In fact, it concluded that no individual police officer engaged in any form of misconduct; rather, the failings arose from a significant deficit in capability and capacity in the PSNI cybercrime teams, as well as resourcing pressures that limited their ability to manage the risks that McCartney posed. It is important to highlight a number of details that are often missing from the public debate on the report. The ombudsman found that reduced capacity in the PSNI child protection team in 2016 was due to absences and other factors and was not a simple issue of wider police headcount. Secondly, the report found that the PSNI cybercrime centre used a prioritisation process in which terrorism and serious crime offences received priority and that that impacted the examination of devices submitted by the child internet protection team. There are lessons to be learnt about how we prioritise issues, but, as Members have rightly said, those are matters for the Chief Constable to reflect on as he responds. Taken together, they demonstrate that the challenges were much broader than recruitment, but I am in no denial about the issues that we face. We also have to recognise that, for much of the period examined, we did not have a Justice Minister or an Assembly. We were not here to do the work that needed to be done and hold people to account on the issues. The PSNI has accepted the findings and said that lessons will be learnt. I am confident that the Chief Constable is working swiftly to do so and that the Policing Board will support him and hold him to account. We have to protect the most vulnerable not only in our communities but globally who may be exposed to the actions of online predators. I think of Cimarron Thomas and her father when I talk about that.

When it comes to online safety, I am committed to doing everything that I can to keep children and young people safe from harm. Social media and online platforms are central to young people's lives, but they present serious risks. The McCartney case highlighted that criminal justice responses alone are not enough. Safeguarding children online requires a coordinated cross-government approach, and that is the basis of the Executive's online safety strategy. My Department plays an active role in the oversight and delivery of that. The Online Safety Act in Westminster was a marked step forward. Ofcom's regulatory role, including guidance on age assurance, represents progress. Strong age verification should not be optional; it is essential in order to keep young people safe. The responsibility for the Act is with the UK Government — responsibility for telecommunications legislation is not devolved — but I worked to influence its development, strengthen accountability and ensure that Northern Ireland's interests were represented. I have also engaged directly with Ofcom, which is the designated regulator when it comes to implementation of the Act's provisions. Members are aware of the significant legislative reforms that we introduced in the previous mandate, which included the new offences of upskirting, downblousing and cyber-flashing, and new grooming-related offences, unique to Northern Ireland and mainly perpetrated online, where an adult pretends to be a child for grooming purposes. We also strengthened the law on abuse of positions of trust to enhance protection for young people from inappropriate grooming in those areas. Those reforms have delivered tangible protections. We keep the situation under review. That is why I sought the Assembly's consent for extending a number of provisions of the Crime and Policing Bill to Northern Ireland and intend to seek consent for further provisions. Proposals include strengthening sex offender notification requirements, particularly around restrictions on the notification of a new name, and requiring child sex offenders to provide notification in advance that they are going to stay for 12 hours or more in a household where children are present. I also propose to extend the new offence to criminalise the creation of child sexual abuse image generators; introduce a new offence of pornography depicting strangulation and suffocation; and update the current offence of possession of a paedophile manual, in order to bring AI-generated imagery within scope. Further new reserved matters in that space include the new offence of online facilitation of child sexual exploitation and abuse and a new power to scan devices for child sexual abuse images at the UK border. Locally, I want to legislate to criminalise the creation and sharing of sexually explicit deepfake images, which I will do by tabling an amendment to the Justice Bill at Consideration Stage. Alongside that, we are leading a strategic approach in the Department and cross-departmentally to all forms of child exploitation. Safeguarding cannot sit in silos; it has to extend into homes, schools, communities and online spaces where young people spend their lives. Members have mentioned that today marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, so it is a timely opportunity for us to discuss those issues. The domestic and sexual abuse strategy, led by the Department of Justice and the Department of Health, and the Executive Office-led ending violence against women and girls strategy provide comprehensive coordinated frameworks for prevention, partnership and victim-centred support. When it comes to police numbers, which is the crux of the debate, I will focus on some of the issues around capacity and funding. Rebuilding policing capacity is my highest priority. That is why the PSNI's workforce recovery business case, developed by the service and submitted to my Department, was approved by me and the Minister of Finance. It sets out a clear plan to stabilise workforce numbers, recommence sustained recruitment and rebuild capability across the organisation. That process has already started, and the overspend that the PSNI projects accounts for the money that has been spent to deliver the first year of the plan. However, getting your business case approved does not mean that you have the cash to deliver it. Investment on the scale of the entire business plan over five years, which will be delivered in an annual tranche, cannot be done by Justice alone. It has to be prioritised at Executive level. I am optimistic that that will happen. We have first call on £7 million in the next monitoring round this year to support PSNI recruitment, a commitment that was reaffirmed in October. That £7 million will, I hope, materialise after the Budget statement tomorrow. Short-term funding injections can help restart recruitment, but they do not resolve the underlying workforce and business-as-usual pressures that the PSNI and my Department face. What we need is sustained, multi-year funding so that the service can plan, recruit, train and retain with confidence. The Finance Minister's recommendation that the remainder of the recovery plan be fully funded in the pending three-year Budget is a significant and welcome step, but it will be meaningful only if it is additional to the baselined amount for the PSNI in the Budget. If it is simply ring-fenced and taken from the Department of Justice's budget, it will be utterly meaningless for delivery. It is important that that be noted. Safer communities is also a cross-cutting priority in the Programme for Government, so, again, it is not only a priority for the Department of Justice. We need to work with other Departments to ensure that we can deliver on it. The scale of the challenge posed by my budget is huge. Police officer numbers during the period covered by the ombudsman's report were higher than the levels today. The collapse of the Executive led to that decline. When we had no Executive, the numbers fell. I came back into office and secured money for an additional 100 officers to take the numbers back up to 7,100. The Executive then collapsed again, which is why that figure was not sustained, as the Member mentioned. We got back up to 7,100, but we collapsed yet again. The Chief Constable then did not have the political cover and an assurance on funding to go ahead and continue recruitment, as he would otherwise have done. That led to the really dire situation that we faced upon coming back into office, and it now needs to be recovered. I have to say that that recovery is far more expensive to deal with than it would have been had we had measured amounts of recruitment during the period of suspension, but I understand the decisions that were taken at the time. My Department has had to take tough decisions in order to live within its budget. We are now at the point at which less than 0·5% of the DOJ budget is truly discretionary. We have not deprioritised the police within Justice. Sixty-five per cent of my budget goes to policing, while 35% of it goes to running the entirety of the criminal justice system outside policing, which covers probation, prisons, courts and everything else. It is therefore not just a policing issue. All justice organisations need to be properly funded if we are to do child protection properly, to have proper public protection sentences and interventions and to have a Police Service that is capable of dealing with the increasing complexity of online harms and of protecting us locally and those internationally whom predators here seek to damage.

1,735 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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