Debate contribution: Justice: Stalled Policy Goals

Debate contribution by Mrs Naomi Long on 10 February 2026.

MLA: Mrs Naomi Long
Party at the time: Alliance Party
Date: 10 February 2026
Type: Debate contribution (made as a minister)
Business: Oral Answers to Questions
Heading: Justice: Stalled Policy Goals
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5435652

Text

I have been unable to progress an increase in the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) despite considerable support for that in a public consultation. That would bring Northern Ireland in line with the international standards, including directives from the UN's Committee on the Rights of the Child. At 10 years of age, our current minimum is the lowest in Europe along with England and Wales. I shared a paper with Executive colleagues that highlighted strong public support for an increase — 83·5% of respondents — and it was clear from the limited number of responses that I received that there continues to be insufficient support to enable the necessary legislative change to be progressed. That is why it was not included in the Justice Bill: I did not want to hold up its introduction through a lack of agreement on content. I am fully supportive of removing the defence of reasonable chastisement from the law here as the effects of physical punishment of children are consistently associated with a wide variety of negative health and developmental consequences for children. As any such amendment will require Executive agreement, which, again, has not been forthcoming, I circulated a draft Executive paper in October 2024, but, despite my efforts, I was not able to secure Executive agreement to deliver change in the law in the current Justice Bill. I will continue to work with ministerial colleagues to seek their approval to repeal the defence of reasonable chastisement and move towards a position of equal protection for children in Northern Ireland. In a draft paper to Executive colleagues in November 2025, I sought agreement on the drafting and inclusion of vagrancy repeal provisions in the Justice Bill. That too was unsuccessful, so it has been paused to allow for further consideration. Finally, I sought the agreement of colleagues to include "transgender" in the list of protected groups under the hate crime provisions in the sentencing Bill. Regrettably, there has been a lack of consensus on that measure, so I have had to remove "transgender" from the list of protected groups identified in the Bill. I will proceed to seek Executive agreement to introduce the Bill with that omitted.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

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: 0.07 (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 (0.89).
No identity-based framing was identified (0.95).
Subject area: Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues.
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

Probability that each statement is true of this text (0 = no, 1 = yes). A criterion counts as met at 0.60 or above.
Question	Probability	Met?
Identity framing	0.06	No
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.02	No
Cultural grievance politics	0.02	No
Dog-whistle messaging	0.03	No
Controversy escalation	0.06	No
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.89	Yes
Overall judgement	0.07	At or below not-flagging threshold

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing (chosen)	0.95
Reports or questions it	0.01
Criticises or condemns it	0.04
Adopts it	0.00

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues	0.72
Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations	0.19
Sexism, misogyny, ageism and other equality groups	0.05
Another identity-related subject	0.04
No identity-related subject	0.00

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:52 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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