Debate contribution: PSNI: Pressure due to Health System Failings

Debate contribution by Mr Jon Burrows on 1 December 2025.

MLA

Mr Jon Burrows

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

1 December 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

PSNI: Pressure due to Health System Failings

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5269480

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion. It is a pity that it is a somewhat simplistic motion that fails to understand the true complexities within which the police operate and with which people present themselves to police, often in an emergency. It should be said at the outset that our Police Service has been under-supported, under-resourced, over-scrutinised and let down by the political class in general in Northern Ireland. It is important to understand that context, and I will explain it as I go through my remarks. Before I do so, I just want to explain the model of policing that we hold dear in this country. I will tell you why that is directly linked. It is not a paramilitary model of policing. When I say "paramilitary", I do not mean it in the sense of Northern Ireland's paramilitaries, but in the sense of "semi-military". It is not an auxiliary force. It is not a pure law-enforcement agency like the National Crime Agency. It is a police service. It has dealt and always will deal with more than simply crime. It is right that it deals with vulnerability and has that at the heart of everything that it does. Let me just divide two things, because they are entirely different matters. I spent thousands of hours in the police dealing with mental health issues and trying to solve the fact that my officers were spending huge amounts of time on mental health issues. Separate the "concern for safety" calls from the issue of spending too much time in emergency departments, effectively babysitting people whilst the health service get ready for them. We need to understand what police face when they respond to "concern for safety" calls. The first thing is that it is a whole-society and whole-Executive issue that people find themselves presenting in a moment of personal crisis. It might be someone standing on a bridge in Derry/Londonderry, where I used to work, ready to throw themselves off. Often, that is due to domestic violence, homelessness, a gambling addiction or some issue in their life that any number of Departments could be responsible for trying to fix. We have seen the statistics on male suicide. More than seven out of 10 suicides are men. They mostly do not self-harm; they go from nothing to personal crisis and suicide. Often, there is no warning sign. That is why the Police Service has to respond, often as the first emergency service that has vehicles out on the ground, to help someone in a moment of need. The second thing that people do not understand is that, often, when dealing with someone with mental health problems, the Ambulance Service needs the police because, whilst we might not like to say it, people with a mental health problem are often extremely violent. They spit. They have weapons. They have knives. They have flags against them that show that they have a propensity for violence. Often, the Police Service sends a resource to protect the people who are our front-line emergency services. It has the equipment, training, experience and vital police powers. A further issue is that, often, the police are the only people with the ability to force entry into a house or do emergency checks — for example, on someone's mobile phone — to determine their well-being. The next thing that we fail to acknowledge is that the reason why the police attend so many "concern for safety" calls is that their resources have been run down so badly that they do not have enough neighbourhood police to do proactive problem-solving. That is one reason why we have seen an increase in "concern for safety" calls. What used to happen was that your neighbourhood policing team would have looked at your profile of "concern for safety" calls and carried out a follow-up. It would have worked with multiple agencies, such as the Housing Executive and education service, to try to problem-solve a case so that the police did not get repeat "concern for safety" calls.

I will not at this stage. There are lots of reasons why the Police Service deals with "concern for safety" calls. By the way, the police have skilled negotiators who sometimes have to spend eight hours talking someone off a bridge. Only the police have those skills. A separate issue is emergency departments. That is a killer for police morale and time. Here is a brutal fact: one of the reasons why the Police Service in this country does not feel able to say no at times or to take a measured risk and tell the security in a hospital, "Keep an eye on that individual. We got him in here safely. Give us a ring if he leaves" is this: if that person leaves and self-harms, we have an ombudsman who will punitively investigate the police officer and spend years trying to find fault, and we have politicians in this place who will call for the head of the police officer. My former colleagues will sometimes say, "It is easier just to stay in the ED because I do not want to risk my career". If you want to take the Right Care, Right Person approach, you need to put support round the Police Service so that, when it takes risk-based decisions, you will support it and not throw it under the bus. The fact that we are where we are is a reflection of society as a whole and of the Police Service that has, in fact, been created by the very people in the room who are now attacking the health service, which is disappointing.

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

Assessment

Not qualifying

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:03 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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