Debate contribution: Criminal Justice (Sentencing etc) Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Mrs Naomi Long on 16 March 2026.

MLA

Mrs Naomi Long

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

16 March 2026

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Criminal Justice (Sentencing etc) Bill: Second Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5448963

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. This debate has been an excellent one, and I thank all the Members who participated. I hope that I will be able to touch on most of the issues that you have raised. If I do not do that today, please come back to me, because there will be opportunities for us to engage as we go forward. Progressing this legislation to improve the effectiveness and the operation of the justice system, particularly as it relates to sentencing, is a priority. It has taken too long to get to this point. A number of Members have mentioned the 10 years that it has taken. Claire Sugden mentioned that, 10 years ago, she originally launched the review of sentencing that has led to many of the things that we have brought forward today. It should not take us 10 years, but we only had five when we were actually here to do the job. What we can do collectively is ensure that this place runs more effectively and more efficiently so that we can do more of the stuff that is impactful. We have seen today how much this impacts on people in our community and how it affects people's lives. What we do here is not just theatre and pantomime: it has to be important, and legislation is where the rubber hits the road. I think that it has taken too long to get to this point, but I am glad that we are now here. As I have said, I thank all Members for their very constructive and positive engagement on the Bill. As it goes through the various stages in the Assembly, I hope that we can continue in that spirit and ensure that an important piece of legislation reaches the statute book as soon as possible and starts delivering for those who enter the justice system across Northern Ireland. Many of you are supportive of the provisions of the Bill as introduced, and some of you have ambitions to change some of those provisions. I will get to that somewhat later. I turn to some of the issues that were raised during the debate. Paul Frew raised quite a number of issues, as you would anticipate that he would, as Chair of the Committee. One of the things that he mentioned in passing was the use of victim statements and how that would be incorporated. We initially thought that we might need legislation, or at least changes to court rules, to allow that to happen. We now know that that is not the case. It is also not the case for the Parole Commissioners. We have seen over recent years, as campaigners have spoken out on this, that more and more victims have had the opportunity to read their statement into the record in the courts or at a parole hearing. That is not a trivial matter. Of course, they could always do it on paper, but there is a perception amongst victims that, at the point where conviction happens, the process moves on and their loved one or their loss becomes almost inconsequential, and all the focus is on the perpetrator and how to deal with that person in sentencing — what are their good points, bad points and rehabilitation opportunities and other things. By allowing victims' families and victims themselves to put in a statement at that point and to be heard is vital in re-injecting their loss, pain and trauma into the process so that it is fully and adequately considered. It is also, for many, the only chance that they will get to have their voice heard in the courtroom. Where defendants, for example, plead guilty before a trial, victims will never get the chance to talk about what happened to them. It is their one chance to have their voice. As Members have rightly said, it is not just about justice being done: it is about justice being seen to be done. When we are dealing with trauma and we become trauma-informed, we learn that people do not end up as victims because they choose to be.

They end up as victims because of other people’s decisions, and it is important that they have some agency over what happens in the case at that point.

A number of other issues were raised, particularly around age, sectarianism and the phase 2 consultation. Transgender issues were raised by a number of Members. I will come to that, because we need to look more closely at the aggravating model on that. However, I highlight the review of sentencing, which is happening in parallel with the Bill. There is no single Bill that we can bring to the House that will deal with everything; it is impossible. I was heavily criticised for trying to do just that. With my first Justice Bill, I took a lot of heat for wanting to add things from some of the Members who are now ambitious to add to this Bill. I am like everyone else: the fear that this place may not be restored immediately after the next election, that there could be delay or hesitation and that we might not be able to make more progress drives us all to try to pack everything that we can into the only vehicle available. It is not necessarily good practice, and it is right that we should take time to do the policy development. That is why I have decided to implement the review of sentencing in parallel, so that we can pick up the issues that we do not have the policy development or the evidence base to legislate for in the Bill but that we know are important to Members and the community. We can start the work to develop policy in that space, because this will not, by any means, be the last sentencing Bill that comes to the House from the Department of Justice. In that context, the Member raised Harper's law. I met his colleague Phillip Brett, because he had campaigned on that issue. My understanding is that, as yet, Harper's law has not been used in England and Wales, so its impact may not be as significant. I would like to look at Harper's law as part of the sentencing review. I will consider the difference between Charlotte's law and Helen's law. There was a clamour in the previous mandate for us to introduce Helen's law, which was to say that the Parole Commissioners should have due consideration of the fact that a murderer had withheld the location of the body in a no-body murder case. That was it: that was all that Helen's law did. Instead, by working with the families of Charlotte Murray and Lisa Dorrian over a sustained period, we have come up with a better and more fit-for-purpose solution. While the Parole Commissioners will have to give due regard to that, it could be 20 years after the death of the person, and that is a long time to wait for vital information. Therefore, we have looked at a sliding scale of benefit. If a person admits to the crime when they are arrested and says where the body is, that is the ideal. If they say it when they are charged formally or arraigned in court, that is different. If they say it during sentencing, there should be some reward for that. They may say it immediately after sentencing. Here is the thing: some people do not realise the impact of the sentence until the first night when the door clicks closed in prison, and those first few weeks can be the point when the person reflects on what they have done. They have been found guilty and sentenced, and they now realise that this will be their life for the foreseeable future. That is another learning opportunity, and somebody can come forward even then to allow their sentence to be reviewed in light of giving up that information. By the time that the case gets to the Parole Commissioners, that should be the last stop. You want to do as much as you can up front to get the information as soon as you can. I argue that, as with Helen's law and what will be Charlotte's law here, we need to look at Harper's law to see what we can do to achieve those objectives in a way that is fit for purpose in Northern Ireland, and I would like to do that as part of the review. The issue of suspended sentences was raised. We are not changing the current arrangements for suspended sentences or the sentences that they can apply to, but we are strengthening how they work. At the moment, the structure for when somebody's sentence can be suspended is already set out in law. We do not intend to change that in the Bill. However, we have learned from, for example, community-based sentencing and the work of the probation service and others that working with somebody can be transformative. Earlier, we talked about problem-solving courts such as the substance misuse courts. Suspending sentencing until somebody has gone through a period of treatment can have an impact on encouraging desistance from reoffending. For us, it is about whether we can put measures in place as part of a suspended sentence, which normally does not happen. Normally, the person's sentence is suspended, and, if they do not reoffend in the suspended period, it falls away. It is counted as a custodial sentence for firearms appeals and other things, but people do not have to serve time in prison. Would it not be better if we were to engage that person in rehabilitation during the suspension period so that we could support their rehabilitation and assist them to move away from offending? That is the purpose behind what we are trying to do. I will give Members the statistics on that. About 18% of sentences for adult disposals in the courts in Northern Ireland have been suspended. The vast majority were in the Magistrates' Court, which is to be expected, given that the cases heard there tend to be of a less serious nature. There were a higher number of summary convictions in that court compared with the Crown Court, where there were only about 1,500 convictions. Over the same period, about 3,450 immediate custodial sentences were imposed across all courts, including the Magistrates' Court and the Crown Court. It is not that we want to overuse suspended sentences, but they may be a way forward. Philip helpfully set out how it is not just victims but perpetrators who can be vulnerable. People who break the law have their own vulnerabilities. Fraud, for example, carries a serious sentence. If suspending that sentence in order to allow somebody to get treatment, rehabilitation and support means that they do not offend again, that is a better outcome for society than locking them up for a prolonged period. If we can change people's behaviours in that context —.

It will vary from place to place and from person to person, but, if Members consider what happens with probation, for example, they will know that people volunteer in various community and voluntary organisations. Many do work in the community where their behaviours have caused harm and are therefore able to give something back. Reparation is part of the purpose of sentencing. Communities often feel better if they see somebody who has done harm in their community putting something back into it. I am sure that most Members are aware of this, but, as an MLA, I have contacted the Probation Board to say that there is a piece of ground or another area, perhaps where the residents are elderly, that has fallen into disrepair and become overgrown. Those guys will go in and give a real service. When residents find out that they are there on probation, they find it encouraging that people who have made a mistake in their life are out there giving something back. That is, in many ways, a much more visible form of justice, as people can see that something has been fixed because people have given something back proportionate to what they took from society. That is really important. A number of Members, including Doug Beattie, asked why we do not extend the review of undue leniency to the Magistrates' Court. Part of the reason is that the sentences available in the Magistrates' Court are much lower. The majority of sentences in that court are of six months maximum. A number are of a year, and, by exception, some are of two years. Given the cost involved and the time taken to appeal, the sentence would probably have been served, if it had not already been served on remand, so it would be a pyrrhic victory to say that a month should be added to it. The person might still be "time served" at the end of the process because they have waited longer than six months to get to court. It is about striking a balance. What we have done, however, which I hope will provide those who have concerns in that space with some reassurance, is to make provision for the review to apply to sentences imposed on summary trial for offences that we can describe in regulations. That would kick in if we were to decide to increase the jurisdiction of the Magistrates' Court. If its sentencing remit were increased, that would allow us to list the sentences that could be appealed for undue leniency. As I said, I will come back to the aggravator model in a while. The Member said that the court would decide. There are a number of phases. First, the PSNI would have to decide that there was a reason to consider it as a hate crime and do the investigation, as you would expect. The Public Prosecution Service would need to decide to try it as a hate crime in the first instance, and the courts would then have to decide whether the hate motive was made out in the court. The benefit, however, is significant. First, you could record the level of those crimes, which is important because, often, the difference between hate incidents and hate crimes and so on becomes very blurred. That would allow us to have a really good measure of where the problems lie. It would also allow the prosecution of the original offence. If it were assault but the hate motive assumed or inferred could not be proven, you could still be charged with common assault, for example. It means that somebody will still be punished. If we created a suite of new offences, the risk would be that, if you could not make out the hate crime motivation, the case would fall completely. That would lead to even more frustration for those who are vulnerable. Crucially, it would also allow us to take account of motivation in sentencing and rehabilitation. If somebody were to come to us with a common assault, our approach would be different from our approach to a racially motivated or disability motivated hate crime, and the targeted interventions that we would want to make would be different. Members have spoken at length about the issue of aggravation by hostility. Rather than jumping around, I will stick with that. The current enhanced sentencing model has not really proved to be effective or easy to apply. I do not think that it really works in the interests of defendants or victims of hate crime. We are trying to allow any criminal offence to be chargeable as being aggravated by hostility where the victim belongs to a racial, religious, sexual orientation or disability group. It requires the court to explain how the fact that the offence is aggravated affects the sentence imposed, and, where that aggravation is not proven, as I said, a conviction for the basic offence will still be available. The consequence is that you would be able to record the motivation, which should help us to be more effective in rehabilitation. The benefit of doing that is that we could start to tackle the attitudes that underpin and enable hate crime. I hope that that will modernise the law in a way that will strengthen protections for the most vulnerable, provide the deterrent that we wish to provide to offenders and ensure that sentences reflect the gravity of the offence and the harm that hate crime incidents cause to not only the victim but the wider community. By reducing the harm, risk and vulnerability associated with hate crime, whether that is racist graffiti, attacks on the homes of newcomer communities or the intimidation of families in new developments, the purpose is to make communities feel safer and enhance public safety. A number of Members raised the issue of transgender identity. Of course, the need for provisions was well documented in the findings of Judge Marrinan's public consultation and the 10 years' worth of evidence that the PSNI shared, showing that transgender people are victims of hate crime and, sadly, increasingly so. This is the only part of these islands where there are no specific protections for transgender people. I do not think that that is a uniqueness that any of us wishes to continue. I sought the agreement of colleagues to add transgender to the list of protected groups, and, on the basis of what, I thought, was consensus, I did so. Unfortunately, that was not the case, and I had to remove it from the Bill. I was disappointed to have to remove it. When it comes to hate crime, you have to include those who are most vulnerable, and transgender people are incredibly vulnerable at this time. However, I did not want other victims of hate crime to be disadvantaged further by delays to the legislation. I am still open to providing whatever reassurance is required to allow the inclusion of transgender as a protected characteristic in the Bill or via secondary legislation, for which we have also made provision. It will be useful to engage with the Committee, as I will with the Executive, in order to try to resolve the issue in a way that, hopefully, will protect those who are most vulnerable.

On the issue of age, the Department originally intended to make provision to deal with attacks on older people. Through the process of consultation, however, it was established that it was not old age itself but vulnerability that was people's key concern. As well as placing in statute the need to protect the most vulnerable, the clause on vulnerability allows the criminal justice system to record the incidence of that type of offending, which will enable us to identify whether resource needs to be directed to preventing and dealing with that. A final decision will be taken on whether age should be included, once we have finished the phase 2 consultation to which I referred. There was not capacity to include a number of pieces of Judge Marrinan's work in the phase 1 consultation, and we have not had the capacity to do the phase 2 consultation, as yet. As Paula Bradshaw mentioned, there has been significant progress on strengthening protections for older people and vulnerable people since Marrinan's review. The vulnerability aggravator clause in the Bill and the Department of Health's Adult Protection Bill both contain provisions that may address some issues of crime against older people. I am open to considering the need for hate crime protections for older people, but I do not want to have duplication, with different offences creating a complex landscape that ends up with nobody using the provisions that are already there. The other issue was about sex or gender being protected characteristics in the Bill. Further policy work is needed in that area, continuing the assessment of the suitability of the inclusion of either "sex" or "gender" as a protected characteristic in hate crime legislation. That will also be part of the phase 2 public consultation, because, in this society, we rightly recognise that there are real issues around not just sexism or chauvinism — that is not to diminish the impact that they have — but actual misogyny, whereby women are treated, as we see, not just with disrespect but in ways that make them fear for their safety. It is important that we take that seriously. As was rightly noted by both Aoife Finnegan and Emma Sheerin, it is important that any future policy decisions on that are considered within the TEO-led framework on the ending violence against women and girls strategy. I want to engage with TEO on that. Equally, the issue of sectarianism has been raised. Tackling sectarianism is an issue that is close to my heart. We need to do further work on sectarianism in the consultation phase, but we found that Scotland was the only region with a legal definition of sectarianism, and that has now been all but overturned. We all know what sectarianism is: if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, the chances are that it is a duck. It is harder to define that in law, however, and I do not want to simply leave it to the courts to decide what sectarianism is. As politicians, we need to show leadership in that area and to have an agreed definition of sectarianism before we start to legislate for it as an aggravator. Another issue that was raised was assaults on public workers. I understand the reason for the concern that those clauses may be too wide, but, sadly, as many Members said, we see front-line workers in all sorts of work areas affected by that. MPs have been murdered. We all have locks on our constituency office doors that we did not have 10 years ago. That pains me, because I want to have an open-door policy so that people can simply walk in off the street and ask for help. It has become too normal for violence to be accepted. It is not acceptable that people are beaten up in their shops at night when they are there to try to protect and deliver for the community. People are being assaulted. Bus drivers tell us about being pulled out of their bus seat and punched in the head when they are driving a bus to get people from A to B. I do not want to create a system in which those who deliver a public service or carry out a public duty are disallowed from using the legislation, but, rather than produce a narrow list and find that we have missed someone out, it is better to create the context and allow the courts and the PPS to decide whether it is appropriate in each individual circumstance.

There are a couple of things. The Member, rightly, said that, even under his legislative changes that were made in 2016, there were people who missed out, such as ED staff. Receptionists in a doctor's surgery often take the brunt of abuse, not the GP. They do not save lives, but they are part of the process that does. I think of people who work in the Prison Service, such as custody nurses, probation officers and solicitors who are meeting their clients. They all provide essential services. I am not particularly comfortable with the idea of a sliding scale, although I am willing to explore it with the Member. I completely accept that those who do emergency work, who are there to save lives and who are hampered by attacks are in a particular category, but that would be taken into account by the judge in sentencing anyway. The issue is about saying that, if you are providing a public service to some degree or other, that is an aggravating factor. The degree to which it is an aggravator is something that the courts can look at. The other issue that the Chair raised — trust me, I will not go through every Member's comments in this level of detail or we will be here until tomorrow — was road traffic offences. I put on record that it is unusual for the Department of Justice to legislate in that space. It is normally the Department for Infrastructure that does so. Therefore, if Members have any new or novel amendments to make in that space, I ask them, first, to reconsider them and, secondly and more importantly, in their consideration, to engage with the Minister for Infrastructure, because I had to get cross-cutting approval for what we have, and it works with what Minister Kimmins is doing. I do not want us to go off-piste and end up doing something that could be dangerous or difficult in that context. I will move on. Patsy reflected on the delays and dysfunction, and he is absolutely right. I hope that what I said about age, transgender, sex, gender and misogyny has given him some reassurance, and that what I said in response to the issues that he and Doug raised about unduly lenient sentencing in the Magistrates' Court has given them some reassurance that we are aware of those issues and take them seriously. Of course, if we decide to further expand the Magistrates' Court, we will look at whether we need to extend the undue leniency provisions. There is the opportunity for us to do that in one of the clauses. The next issue that Patsy raised was Caoimhe's law. Caoimhe's law is not in the Bill. It was brought to us recently by families who are campaigning. There are a number of issues. First, it cuts across the responsibilities of several Departments. It involves not just the Department of Justice but quite a few others, including Health and Infrastructure, as well as the Home Office and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which has responsibility for digital policy, so it has a lot of control over what can and cannot be put up. It is a cross-departmental issue. I have said that the issue would fit better in the victims and witnesses of crime Bill that is about to be introduced in the spring and that, if Committee members are minded to bring forward an amendment, the Department can assist with that. However, we as a Department simply would not have the time or the capacity to do it. We would have to go to full consultation and go through a series of processes that, to be honest, we could not navigate with the resources available to us. However, if the Committee is minded to do something, it would probably fall within the scope of the victims and witnesses of crime Bill. My officials will be more than happy to guide and assist where they can.

It would. This is one of the conversations that we need to have: do we want to do this quickly, or do we want to do it completely? This is about victims of road accidents. I understand the passion that people have around that, but there are other circumstances. When my father died, he dropped dead on the street. People were working on him outside on the street. I will never forget going to the front door, as a 10-year-old child, and not realising that it was him, but seeing him lying there being worked on. I do not know how I would have reacted if that had been photographed and spread over the internet. That is something that I did not have to deal with. It is still burned in my mind, but it is something that most people will not see. So I am worried that, by focusing solely on road traffic accidents, we will miss other incidents, such as somebody getting medical treatment on the street, for example, or somebody who has overdosed. This is about the dignity and safety of individuals — those who are in crisis on the street and those who are receiving treatment in the public domain. We could do something around Caoimhe's law and keep it narrow, but, at some point, we will have to come back to this and look at whether a wider piece of work needs to be done. If the Committee was going to do it, it would have to be kept quite narrow in order for it to be well defined. We would assist with whatever conversations needed to happen with the other Departments, but we need to think through the consequences, because this is the tip of a big iceberg where people's personal privacy and dignity are being intruded upon all the time on social media and other platforms. It causes real distress to families and to people who are given assistance by the roadside or on the street. It is something that we need to think of. I am happy to engage —.

That is another possibility, and Members may want to look to that. At the end of the day, I cannot prescribe what happens. I hope that the Member understands this — he has seen the draft Budget and the impact of the Budget. He talks about the Committee only having five members of staff. Of course, the Department has more than five, but not in this area of work. The officials who I see on this Bill are the same officials I see for all the other Bills. People have lost a sense of connection with how small the core part of DOJ is. A lot of the staff from our overall numbers are deployed on the front line — in prisons, policing and other areas. If you look at who we have to do this work, you will see that we are talking about very small teams of dedicated people. We would not have the capacity to do it, and I do not believe that the Office of the Legislative Counsel would be able to do it either, given the amount of pressure that is building on it from Executive colleagues progressing more legislation. I agree that there is a risk that this is done, or done badly, at haste rather than in detail. I am willing to engage with the Committee. If there is a way that we can do something in this space, or create an opportunity to do something by regulation, such as putting an enabling power in place, I will be happy to have those conversations. I do not want to shut it down, because I recognise that this is an emotive issue for the families involved, but I know that in order to find the resource to do this, we would have to stop other significant pieces of work that I cannot stop. However, I am happy insofar as we have the capacity to lean in and try to be of assistance where we can. I welcome what Connie said, particularly about recognising that the Bill will not be the be-all and end-all when it comes to sentencing. It is the start of a process of change, and further sentencing provisions will be introduced in due course. I do not want perfect to become the enemy of the good. It is more important that we get this done, and done right, than that we get everything that we could possibly throw at it squeezed in. That is important.

Doug also raised, as I anticipated he would before he had even spoken, the sentencing council. I know that he is passionate about that, and I understand why. As you know, there is the Sentencing Council for England and Wales and a similar model in Scotland. Given that there was division and not full agreement the last time on a sentencing council, we decided to put that into the sentencing review. We want to look at it again and ask whether it would need to be like the Sentencing Council for England and Wales or whether, short of that, we can do something else that will still give the kind of transparency and accountability that people are seeking. The advantage of a sentencing council is that the definitive guidelines that it can put forward in relation to certain categories of offence means that you can get consistency and uniformity — mostly — across the courts, and it reflects the fact that that jurisdiction is very large. All our judges pretty much spend most of their day under a single roof, so striving for consistency ought to be simpler in a smaller jurisdiction and perhaps would not need a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I mentioned cost, so I want to refer to the findings of the review. In the business plan for 2024-25 for the Sentencing Council for England and Wales, staff costs were £1·65 million and non-staff costs were £250,000. The Scottish Sentencing Council has cost £4·6 million over the last 10 years, and the allocation was £1·025 million in 2024-25. There would be considerable exposure for the Department when it comes to funding a sentencing council, so, given that we have nothing set aside for that in the current Budget cycle, it would be better, before we make decisions, to take the time afforded to us to bottom out exactly what we want a sentencing council to do, how we want it to work and what resources we will be able to put into it. The other issue that Doug raised, which, again, I predicted — I am not suggesting that you are always predictable, Doug — was early guilty pleas. I completely agree with you on that one. I feel hugely frustrated about that, as, I think, a lot of members of the public do. It needs to be much clearer for defendants and victims how early guilty pleas work. At the moment, whilst, in theory, judges have total discretion as to whether or not they can give any credit for an early guilty plea, the maximum credit is about 33%. The minimum credit is between 20% and 25%, and that was based on a court decision in R v Coyle. There is not a huge difference between 33% and 25%, so there is not much of an incentive for somebody to come forward. That is one aspect of this where, I think, we need a reset. The other area that we need to reset is this: what is "early"? Is it early in the court system or early in the journey through the whole justice system? If somebody pleads guilty immediately on arrest or on charge and says, "Yes, I did it", that saves a multitude of pain for victims and witnesses. It also saves a fortune when it comes to the detail of the case that needs to be built for that person to go through court and be convicted and sent to prison. If they do not plead until arraignment, they can still save the victims a lot of stress. However, they can also cause the victims a lot of stress. If it has taken you three or four years to get to court and you have had to steel yourself throughout that time to be in court, and the person who has abused you in the past then whips the rug from under your feet at the last minute, it will not feel early to you. It may be early to the judge, but it is not early to you. Therefore, we now need to look at that. We discuss it regularly in the Criminal Justice Board. There are benefits to the Public Prosecution Service and to policing from having a properly graduated system in which everyone can see what the outcome will be if you plead guilty at various stages. I dealt with one victim, and I want to share a bit of the story without sharing too much. She was a victim of child sexual abuse at the hands of her siblings. She did not report it to the police until she was an adult, and, as an adult, she had lived with it her whole life. Her brothers continued to contend that they did not do it and that it had never happened, so she had to go to court, which was a really traumatic experience. During the trial, they pled to a lesser charge and got credit for an early plea. She said to me, "How can the past 40 years of my life, and seven years of court wrangles, mean that it can be considered to be an early plea?". The trauma caused to her and her family was immense. What we mean by an early guilty plea therefore needs to be considered, because it may not feel early to the victim. I thank Maurice Bradley for sharing his family's very personal experience of losing a loved one to dangerous driving, which is a really impactful issue. Increasing the starting point and the maximum sentence for those cases is really important to families. I reassure him that we will not create lots of new offences. Rather, we want to provide clarity on how sentencing works and offer more robust alternatives to custody. I also reassure him that, although we are doing that, we will still need our prison at Magilligan. The new prison will come. Very importantly, Emma Sheerin and Philip McGuigan recognised that understanding the vulnerability of offenders as well as of victims is an important part of justice. I hope that the purposes and principles of the Bill reflect that. As Members can see, we have said that the principles are that sentencing should be fair, proportionate and transparent. The proposed purposes are punishment, which is important and the one that everybody goes to immediately; protection of the public, including victims; reduction of crime through deterrence, which can also be done through that rehabilitation process that I mentioned; and making reparations. Those are the established principles that surround court rulings, but putting them down on paper so that people can see what a sentence is meant to achieve is really important for securing public confidence. As I mentioned already, the fact that sentencing for serious offences can still be suspended is not the norm. It does not happen routinely, but it does happen in certain cases. Philip talked about people who, for lots of reasons, such as addiction or other pressures, may find themselves with a serious charge against them and a serious conviction, yet their likelihood of reoffending is quite low. In such cases, giving a suspended sentence and allowing them, as we are suggesting, to have positive input during that time to deal with the underlying causes of their offending may be more effective in turning their life around and making the community safer. I have agreed to meet the all-party group on that issue. I look forward to discussing how we take those issues forward, including as part of the review. It is really important that we understand the reasons behind offending. Paula raised the issue of hate crime and the wider impact of crime that is motivated by hostility and hatred. Hopefully, we have been able to deal with that. I put on record my thanks to Claire Sugden, who started this process back in the distant mists of time. It has now finally come to fruition in the Bill. I hope that the next review will be implemented much more quickly and that we will not have to wait 10 years for one to happen. Mark Durkan acknowledged the judiciary's complex role. One of the reasons that we have steered away from mandatory minimum sentences is that we are trying to avoid fettering judicial discretion. There will, however, be exceptional cases, so it is important that the judiciary recognise that and take account of the evidence. We try to peg it from the top of the sentence, and then the judiciary can decide whether there are mitigations or aggravations and proceed from there. On balance, that is a better way forward. We have only a very small number of cases in which there are mandatory minimum sentences. I would be keen to avoid fettering judicial discretion, simply to give the judiciary its place. Deterrence came up more than once. I will be honest: the truth is that being caught is the biggest deterrent. Most people do not commit crime expecting to be caught. If they think that they will be caught, that serves as a deterrent. Does anybody who embarks on a course of criminal activity ever sit down and ponder whether they will get 18 months, two years or two and a half years before they go out and do what they are doing? Probably not. There is a deterrent effect for offences such as murder, as there should be. The truth, however, is that many people in the prison system are there for crimes of impulse. They are in prison for crimes that were not thought through or considered. There are people whose lives are spiralling into chaos, and, as a result, they do things without giving any thought to the consequences for themselves, their victim or anyone else. The degree to which deterrence will be influenced by small changes in the sentence is, I think, limited. It is not without value, of course, but the bigger issue is about getting more police officers out there so that people have the real deterrent of thinking that they will get caught. That will be transformative. Suspended sentences and community orders can help with drug dealing. The issue is about how they are managed in the community. Vulnerability is also complex. Many of those who deal drugs in this society do so under coercion. They do it under coercion from paramilitaries to pay off debts or from others who previously dealt them drugs and now demand that they deal drugs in the community. You can have multiple levels of vulnerability in that. When I met Pauline Duddy, I was really impressed by her. How she has handled the loss of her daughter Jasmin and campaigned for us to take vulnerability in drug deaths seriously is remarkable. When I meet parents of young people who have died, victims of crime and people who have suffered, I never fail to be impressed by the positivity with which they approach what has happened to them. Almost all of them know that what they are doing will make no difference to their situation. It will not make them better or get justice for their child or family member, but they all say that they do not want it to happen to anyone else. That common humanity shows itself really strongly in someone such as Pauline. Those who direct or participate in organised crime are already dealt with in the Sentencing Bill. I do not think that it is always about the person who hands the package over. It is the people at the top of the food chain who push those drugs out into our community and exploit all manner of vulnerability and need who really need to be tackled. I really want to deal with those people. As I have said, there are a number of areas in the new review: for example, good character evidence; serious sexual offences and the sentencing around those; drug-related offences, as a direct result of Pauline Duddy's speaking with us; Harper's law; fireworks offences, which were previously raised in the Chamber; animal welfare and environmental crime, which I am doing jointly with Andrew; and sentencing guideline mechanisms, including whether we should have a council. There is also the independent sentencing review in England and Wales: we need to take cognisance of that, but, rather than jumping on the bandwagon now, I would rather see how it works through the system first. We will still be working on those areas. We have not set any of them aside just because they are not in the Bill. I thank Members for sticking it out for the duration of the debate. I am really encouraged by the support and the constructive behaviour and engagement today. I thank everybody who contributed to the debate. It has been really useful, and it has given us food for thought. I anticipate that the Committee will find the Bill's content interesting and compelling. I trust that there will be a new appreciation of the complexity of this area of law, not only in the Committee but in the public domain, as we debate the issues and, hopefully, help people to understand. As I said, there will be a temptation to pack more and more content into the Bill, but I ask people to try to show restraint. I, too, would love to pack more into the Bill, and, while there will be things around the margins that we can do, given the limited time that we have, the priority will be ensuring that the Bill gets through before the end of the mandate, so that those who have waited for 10 years and more to get legislation on the books will be able to see it go through in this mandate. I commend the Bill to the Assembly for approval, and I wish the Committee every success in the task ahead. Our shared endeavour on the Bill can be an exemplar of how Ministers and Committees should work together to bring better outcomes to the public.

7,588 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:13 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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