Naomi Long
East Belfast · Alliance Party · Northern Ireland
“Underneath the Facebook posts to say that he had passed away, people speculated with such comments as, "Probably high on drugs", "Probably drunk", and, "Typical boy racer". There was all of that speculation. It was hurtful to the family, and it was inaccurate.”
“There are circumstances that we need to consider and be careful of. I was told, for example, that, when the issue of good character references at trial was being looked at in New South Wales — Committee members may wish to look at this for themselves — one of the groups that opposed their removal was representative of domestic abuse victi…”
“It sets out the strategic direction adopted by the Department and key partners to tackle those appalling crimes and protect vulnerable victims of exploitation.”
“The provision seeks to provide protection, via legal advice and representation for complainants, against the use of non-relevant personal material and evidence of previous sexual history being used in the court process.”
“<BR /> <BR />On the wider issue of ensuring that a withdrawal of services never happens again, I think that most of us agree that, although everyone has the right to take industrial action, no one has the right to derail and hold to ransom the entire justice system in that way.”
“Those measures will go some way towards helping to support complainants and enable them to have input into the decision-making process about what records containing their personal and sensitive information are required to be shared with the defence.”
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“Whatever happens over the next two weeks, I appeal directly to the Ulster Unionist Party Member who has appeared on the Benches today and who signed the petition of concern to allow that process to take its course. Allow the votes of the people in the House to count equally, allow us to represent our constituents as we were elected to do and work with us, as we have agreed to work with you on previous amendments to ensure that, whatever we agree, it is something that will not just benefit any one party but will benefit the people of Northern Ireland, whom we have all been sent here to serve.”
“Disagreement does not have to be a fight. Not every situation has to be about winning or losing. It is possible for us to work together and navigate a way through issues.”
“<BR /> <BR />I want to address the amendments tabled by Ms Mulholland and Mr Carroll that would introduce a review period. Given the length of time that it has taken us to get to a place in which an increase in the MACR is a genuine possibility, even given the concerns that people still hold, it is only right that we keep that change under review. Their amendments place a legislative requirement on my Department to do that review and publicly report on the findings. From my perspective, if we were to be in the position that any amendments pass, I would be happy to support either of the amendments on a review mechanism. <BR /> <BR />The minimum age of criminal responsibility has been one of the more challenging areas that we have debated, but we have demonstrated today that we can do so with some grace, thought and, I hope, good humour.”
“I therefore maintain the position that, in addressing harmful and concerning behaviour by children, particularly when they are as young as 10 or 11 years old, we, as a society, should adopt a welfare-based approach that seeks to examine and tackle the root causes of the behaviour. For me, that is the best opportunity to prevent reoffending and, crucially, to ensure that there are fewer victims. I did not become Minister of Justice simply to defend those who have done the indefensible. That is not my job; my job is to protect the public and ensure that the law is adequate to do that. That is my focus. It is about how to ensure that fewer people have criminal intent and continue to reoffend so that victims and the wider community are safe. I cannot support Mr Beattie's amendment.”
“<BR /> <BR />We sought legal advice on that particular point from the Departmental Solicitor's Office and the Office of the Attorney General for Northern Ireland, and it is clear that they also have concerns. The amendment carries a risk of being incompatible with article 7 of the ECHR and therefore could bring the provision outside the legislative competence of the Assembly, pursuant to section 6(2)(c) of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. That is clearly a position that we cannot support. <BR /> <BR />Ultimately, we know that serious offending in that age group is extremely rare.”
“The amendment tabled by Mr Beattie would therefore be a major departure from well-established norms and would give rise to a lack of certainty in the legal framework. While prosecutorial discretion has always existed, whereby not all breaches of the criminal law result in criminal proceedings, the proposed amendment goes much further by requiring the Director of Public Prosecutions to determine whether conduct constitutes a criminal offence. Its view is that that would overextend the proper prosecutorial remit of its role and inappropriately encroach on the Assembly's lawmaking powers. Furthermore, the PPS raised concerns that the amendment would not be compliant with article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which requires criminal offences to be clearly defined in law.”
“That creates a lacuna in the law for the PSNI. In all but the most serious cases, the DPP will not find a compelling reason to prosecute, so officers will therefore process children through custody, with all the associated obligations under PACE, including appropriate adult provision, legal representation, custody records and interviews under caution, knowing that the overwhelming majority of cases will not proceed. The resource and operational implications of this are not insignificant. <BR /> <BR />The PPS response highlighted that the independent prosecutor has no role in defining the scope of the law, but the amendment would give it such a role. Its duty is simply to apply the test for prosecution based on the law that is already established by the legislature and the courts.”
“<BR /> <BR />I have sought the views officially of the PPS and the PSNI on the proposed amendment. I know that Doug said that he had had conversations with all sorts of people. However, I sought their views officially for the purposes of this debate. Both organisations raised concerns, and I want to put them on the record so that the Member for Upper Bann will be able to read them tomorrow. <BR /> <BR />The PSNI expressed concerns relating to the practical, legal and infrastructure consequences of the amendment as drafted, all of which represent a barrier to operationalising the proposed system. Amongst other issues, it noted that, under the proposal, the PSNI retains full powers to arrest, interview and charge children aged 10 and 11, yet the default legal presumption is that no such child can be guilty of an offence.”
“I understand the concerns that Members have about serious offences, which is why I said that the age should be up to 14, with exceptions. However, the increase being proposed to 12, with a caveat that it will not apply to cases where the DPP decides that prosecution should proceed if it is in the public interest, does not go far enough, in my view. I am also concerned that children aged 10 and 11 years old can still be arrested and charged under the amendment. That means that they can also be held in custody under PACE and on remand, which will bring them further into contact with the justice system. They would be brought in and would have to be assessed at some level on whether or not there was a public interest in prosecuting them. We are seeking to prevent that.”
“We had a bit of a debate earlier as to whether people were competent or not competent, and whether motions were competent or not competent. There is a difference between legislative competence and the competence of the House to be able to make those decisions and people being incompetent in the way that they draft them. Just to make it clear, that is what I was referring to yesterday. <BR /> <BR />Amendment No 86, tabled by Doug Beattie, proposes increasing the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 12 years, but with a range of conditions attached. First of all, it does not meet the provisions of the UNCRC, which recommended that the age of criminal responsibility be at least 14, without exception. However, Alliance has been on record previously as supporting 12 in order to make progress with the review, so we are open-minded.”
“I am simply giving you my view: I would have some sympathy with that, because, last year, only about 16 children were tried on indictment in any respect, so we are talking, again, about small numbers. <BR /> <BR />I still believe that amendment No 82 strikes the best balance and is what I support. However, should that amendment receive support, I do not want to see it diluted. That is the point that I am making with respect to the DUP amendment. It also provides an opportunity to improve outcomes significantly for children right up to the age of 14. There are children who will go through the criminal justice system but ought not to. That is where I am at. <BR /> <BR />Last, but by no means least, if Doug —. No, Doug is not here, but he had tabled —. It is a pity, because this is quite important.”
“In order for your amendment to be moved, we would first have to agree one of the other two amendments, which would be my preference. Then, your amendments would come, and I would not want to unpick those. If you had a stand-alone amendment, and the first two fell, I would have voted for it. That is the circumstance in which I would have been happy to do so. It is a compromise, and any progress that we make in this mandate would be good. <BR /> <BR />Amendment No 84 would remove the exceptions specified in the cross-party amendment and replace them with any offence, "triable only on indictment". I have more sympathy with that, but I do not know that we would get to the point where there was an overall view.”
“However, if we were to make a pragmatic choice tonight, we could get somewhere, and we would be able to agree on somewhere between 12 and 14. <BR /> <BR />I do not support either of the two amendments in the names of Messrs Frew, Bradley and Kingston because they roll back the other amendments. However, I have said that, had the Members tabled a stand-alone primary amendment, with the age of 12 minus indictable offences, I would have been open to considering it. We did not get the chance. The first would roll it back.”
“There may come a time when the system is able to deal with those young people outside the justice system as well. For now, however, it is better that they be inside the justice system at the age of 16. We are talking about allowing young people to vote at 16. We allow young people to join the cadets and get involved in all sorts of other things. Sixteen-year-olds can work and contribute taxes. On the issue of criminalisation, I am therefore slightly wary of infantilising them. It does not really make sense. I will be honest and say that I could not support raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 16 with no exceptions. I think that the amendment goes too far. I understand why others, having looked at international evidence, feel differently.”
“That is why not stigmatising them in the community matters. The label of being a child who has been in care or in a juvenile justice centre sticks. Nobody in here, no matter how hard they try, can convince me otherwise, and they do try. Should amendment No 82 not get sufficient support, I will support Sian Mulholland's amendment. <BR /> <BR />Gerry Carroll's amendment seeks to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 16 with no exceptions. Today, somebody said, "Think back to when you were 13 or 14", and I did. I think back to when I was 16. For me, raising the age to 16 with no exceptions would be going too far. It is way too soon for that. I was a lot more savvy as a 16-year-old than I was as an 11-, 12- or 13-year-old.”
“Surely we should learn the lesson of the fear that a 12-year-old child has when they are being criminally and sexually exploited and when they themselves have engaged in the abuse of another person but are then afraid to talk to their parents about it, because they realise that they have done something wrong. They had done something wrong, but they were a child: a child who was being manipulated by an adult. <BR /> <BR />That is why not criminalising young people matters. We want young people to be able to come forward without fear of judgement or retribution but still have accountability. We do not want young people who have been dragged into the wake of adult criminal activity to be so scared of authority that they cannot come forward. That is why not criminalising young people matters.”
“I do not like using victims and namechecking them in a way that, in some respects, tries to weaponise their experience against other people's opinion. I do not think that it is fair. It has been done to us today, but it is not fair. I will say this, however: young people out there are being sexually exploited. Recently, we had a case — Members will all be aware of it without my mentioning names — in which an individual was not just abusing young children on an industrial scale but forcing them to commit sexual offences with their siblings. One of those children was so scared that she killed herself.”
“Frankly, if a child of 10 is engaging in rape, you have got to wonder where that child has been prematurely sexualised and ask questions of the people around them about potential abuse. We need to be willing to ask those kinds of questions in the debate, and not just look at every hard case on the boundary, because nine is as much a boundary as 10, 11, 12 or 13. The issue is this: what system would replace it? We have said that no change would be effected until a system was in place. That is belt and braces. We would work alongside statutory and third-sector partners to deliver the new framework and do so through taking a multi-agency approach outside the justice system. <BR /> <BR />We need to take seriously the stigmatisation of young people in the justice system.”
“As I said to Paul Givan when he was in the Chamber, if a child of nine were to lift a pair of scissors and stab somebody in the hand, does anybody seriously think that there would be no consequences? Of course there would be consequences. Would they be criminal consequences? No. Would there be consequences, however? Absolutely.”
“To me, that just does not add up. <BR /> <BR />It should be emphasised that, if we achieve an increase, we would want other means of dealing with concerning behaviour.”
“That is another myth that we have heard: if you raise MACR, suddenly all the organised crime gangs will want to suck all the young people who are under the MACR in. First, those gangs are already doing that. You cannot make that argument and, at the same time, stand up and say, "But what about the teenage rioters?". They are already being abused. The issue is that they would not be criminalised. They would be able to come forward and say that they are being abused and seek help, and, when they come to the attention of police when they are arrested at a riot, they would, in the first instance, be treated as a potential victim of child criminal exploitation rather than as a criminal. That is why it matters. There is no evidence that, in Scotland, there was any increase in offending among the cohort that fell below the raised MACR.”
“<BR /> <BR />When it comes to the competing amendments on offer, I believe that amendment No 79, tabled by Sian Mulholland, which would raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 14, with a number of exceptions for serious offences for those aged 10 or over, is a reasonable alternative and also worth considering for anybody who is interested in it. I hope that the exceptions in Sian's amendment will reassure Members who have previously expressed concern that grave offending would be taken from the ambit of the justice system by changes to the minimum age of criminal responsibility. That said, serious offending by children under 14 years of age in Northern Ireland is very rare, and there is no reason why an increase in MACR should change that.”
“It has often been deployed, even in this debate, as an argument against doing it, but, when you try to address it, it is used against you to say, "Well, why are you doing it? It does not make sense if you think that children do not understand". It is about balance. It is about recognising that some offences are so heinous that they could actually cause such damage to victims that you have to balance that out. That is why those most serious offences were listed. I am very supportive of that amendment.”
“You do not tell them what to do. <BR /> <BR />I will deal with the amendments slightly out of order, which is not what I normally do. Amendment No 82, which is the cross-party amendment tabled by Emma Sheerin, Patsy McGlone and Sian Mulholland, would see an absolute increase in MACR in Northern Ireland to 12, as recommended by the independent youth justice review in 2011, and a caveated increase to 14, with exceptions for a limited number of very serious offences for 12- and 13-year-olds. There are different opinions before us, and I think that that is the best balance of those different opinions. For a number of Assembly colleagues, the inclusion of that safety net will be vital because of the risk of a child committing very serious offences.”
“There is no suggestion otherwise or that that would be withdrawn. <BR /> <BR />Colleagues are aware that I want to see a change happen. I wish, like everybody wishes, that it could have been brought through an Executive-agreed amendment. However, wishes are all well and good, but real children are suffering as a result of the lack of progress. I would rather see progress than wait for the perfect circumstances in which to deliver it, because I do not believe, based on what we have heard today, that those perfect circumstances will ever be perfect enough. Yes, I was pleased that amendments were brought to the Bill, but, unlike what some Members said, I ordered nobody to do anything. Those people who think that, in politics, you can order your colleagues around are up for a rude awakening in that regard. You work with your colleagues.”
“In the past six years, only one child of that age has been sentenced to custody in the juvenile justice centre — one. On that basis, I think that we should be legislating for the majority of our young people, not for the outliers or for the rare cases but for the majority of children who pass through the system so that we can set them on a different path on which they can contribute to this society in a way that is constructive for them, their families and wider society and does not create more victims. I will provide the reassurance — I sought it today — that, irrespective of the change to the minimum age of criminal responsibility, we would still do our awareness raising and education for thousands of children every year through the Youth Justice Agency. We would still be working with social services on best practice.”
“I cannot accept the idea that there is no attempt at multi-agency working; I see it all the time. I see the Department of Education, the Department of Health, the Department for Communities, the Executive Office and others working together. Is it perfect? No, it is not perfect anywhere, but it is pretty good. We also have a community and voluntary sector that makes a massive contribution, which is an advantage that many other regions do not have. <BR /> <BR />Offending and risk-taking behaviour by children below the minimum age of criminal responsibility would continue to be addressed but through the provision of welfare-based interventions rather than punitive responses. Offences committed by children aged between 10 and 13 years of age are rarely serious.”
“<BR /> <BR />I met a young man in Hydebank who had spent his whole life being bounced between care homes and foster care, and he was abused at most stages of being moved around. I asked him how he found Hydebank, and I could have wept at his reply. He said that it was the best thing that had ever happened to him: for the first time in his life, somebody cared whether he woke up in the morning and got out of bed. It should not take a young person to be in prison before somebody cares whether they get up in the morning. <BR /> <BR />Our response has to be proportionate, age-appropriate and delivered through a proper multi-agency approach, and that is what we do. I understand the point that the Member was trying to make. The Executive have many failings, but, on the ground, multi-agency working does work.”
“<BR /> <BR />Applying the same standards to those children as we do to adults is not fair or just. Ten-year-olds do not have impulse control or an understanding of long-term consequences. I know that because my father died when I was 10, and I did not fully understand what permanence meant at that stage in my life. I could not understand it. To suggest, therefore, that, if I had murdered somebody, I would have understood the permanence of my action makes no sense to me. These are children. Often, the young people who display those concerning behaviours have experienced adversity, trauma or unmet needs, and, as mentioned earlier, they have been abused and neglected. Often, they are testing the boundaries in the hope that somebody will care enough to say no to them.”
“Absolutely. I will also make a point that a number of Members made earlier. Young people in care often come into conflict with the police more regularly because the care system relies on the police to parent the children. I ask the Members of the House who have children this: would you let your 12-year-old daughter walk down the lane from your home, get into a car with an adult male and disappear for two or three days at a time? Would your only response be to ring the police and report a missing person, or would you stop them from going? Under our current regulations on restrictive practice, the care staff cannot stop them from going, and Ray Jones highlighted that in his report. If we are to protect those young people, we need to change that.”
“Also, applying the same standards of criminal responsibility to a 10-year-old as we do to adults ignores the neuroscience and the evidence about their lack of emotional maturity. Do children at 10, 11, 12, and 13 years of age know right from wrong? At a basic level, yes, assuming that that has been instilled in them in the home, but not every child has that benefit. Not every child thinks that it is wrong to walk into a shop and take what they need, because they watch the adults in their life do that.”
“Good luck to any 17-year-old who is still in primary school.”
“We are also out of line with other age-related legislation, and how we treat children in the criminal justice system is plainly different from how we treat them in other areas of social policy. There is a fundamental disparity in the standards of accountability to which we hold children — and they are children. At 11 years old, children are making the transition from primary to secondary school. They are children.”
“That is what it does, but it is backed up, as my colleague rightly pointed out, by more than 90 organisations that work at the coalface on the issue that believe that the UNCRC has got it right. I am not one of those people who thinks that we should just dismiss expert opinion. I think that if we listened more to expert opinion and less to nonsense, we would be in a much better place as a society in general. <BR /> <BR />The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has repeatedly said that the minimum age of criminal responsibility in Northern Ireland is not compatible with the Government's obligations — that is, the UK Government's obligations — under international standards of juvenile justice and the UNCRC responsibilities.”
“I wrote it down: Paul Givan said that it would not happen in future mandates. To be clear, for those who are awaiting the reassurance of me providing an alternative system and placing it in front of them like a sacrifice so that they can see all the details of how it works, it is not going to happen, because we have been told that the answer is no. Unless there are significant changes in the representation in the Chamber, this is not going to happen. We need to accept that that is the reality. I cannot afford to spend money on flights of fancy, even if other Ministers have surplus money to do that. <BR /> <BR />I will move on to the issues in the motion. I turn, first of all, to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. There have been a lot of derogatory comments made about it. Yes, it is made up of experts and academics.”
“We set out why we wanted to make the change, the benefits that it could bring and the support that it had, but that conversation was not progressed. Therefore, on the one hand, Members want me to solve the problem, but they are unwilling to engage at the appropriate time for me to be able to do that. Therefore, it is a failure of our politics that we are here tonight, and it is likely that all the amendments will fall. It is a failure, but I do not accept that it is my failure, because I have reached out multiple times to discuss the issues with other parties, and I got nothing back from the DUP on it at all. The only response that we got was no, and you cannot negotiate with no. <BR /> <BR />Today, that was reinforced. Some Members talked about having to come back and do it all again. It was reinforced.”
“No, I will not give way at this point. <BR /> <BR />I want to be able to come here and have a debate, and there was a debate that we could have had, but I was denied that first at the Executive. When people ask what did I do to try to bring people with me, I will say that, first, there was a report. Then we went for the age of 12, which David Ford proposed in the previous mandate, but it was voted down. We then approached the other parties at special adviser level when I came back into office, and we suggested having a conversation about this, but we got no response from certain parties. I do not need to be detailed about which ones, because we all know. We then reached out again, and we provided the data to back up the position.”
“It disenfranchises not only the Alliance Members of the House but a section of our electorate. I caution Members against thinking that that is the way forward, because dismissing other people's electorate is something that we are often charged with in the Alliance Party — that we do not understand how other people think. Very little thought is given to how our voters think when it comes to issues such as this. Very little respect is paid to our voters when it comes to issues such as this.”
“I have been clear that I do not believe that it is right that, in a democratic Chamber such as this, my vote should count for any less than the Chairman's vote or the Deputy Chairman's vote or anyone else's vote in the Chamber, nor should theirs count for any more than mine. That is a basic democratic norm, but that was turned on its head last night, and heat rather than light was generated as a result. I probably contributed to that, so, through the Chair, I apologise if I contributed to that. It was not my intention to do so, because I value the order that comes from the Chamber. I value the orderly debates that we have, but I cannot place value on what happens in the Chamber if I am going to be routinely excluded from processes that matter to me and my colleagues.”
“That made the rest of the debate feel futile and again turned the Chamber into the Theatre of the Absurd for a period. I did not sign up to be onstage in the Theatre of the Absurd. Like most others in the Chamber, I come here to try to do the best that I can for my constituents.”
“<BR /> <BR />Things have been said in the Chamber that I disagree with, but other things have been said that have given me food for thought with regard to how to navigate some of the more difficult cases. I have not been sitting here presuming that this would be simple, but I have said from the beginning that it would require an alternative proposal for how to deal with such cases. First of all, however, we need to take a step and say that we actually want to move, because, if we do not want to move, it is a nugatory, pointless exercise for me to ask my officials to do it. <BR /> <BR />People also say, "Well, it's going to predetermine the outcome". Sadly, it probably will. It probably will, because those who have already bent to the pressure are unlikely to change their minds.”
“If you want to come here and just read into the record, post it in, because you are making no contribution to the sum total of what we learn in these debates. <BR /> <BR />A number of weeks ago, at the Second Stage of the Education Inspections Bill, we came to the Chamber fairly sceptical of the Minister's intent, but we engaged with the Minister, sought assurances on the issues about which we were concerned, received those assurances during the debate and voted for the Bill. We did not roll up intending to vote in a certain way irrespective of what happened. We often do that, because that is what political discourse is about, and that is what we should do in the House.”
“I will in a second. <BR /> <BR />The amendment did not collapse under scrutiny. The problem is that we now have a predetermined outcome. I know that some people will shrug and say, "Well, don't you always? You all come to the Chamber and just vote the way you were going to vote. You don't really listen to one another, and you don't really engage: it's always predetermined". Well, that is not true. Let me give you an example to show that it is not true. I value debate. I actually listen to what other people say and try to respond. I know that that is annoying because I make a lot of interventions, but that is what good debate looks like: it is an exchange of ideas and an opportunity to try to answer unanswered questions.”
“They would have something to say: an actual contribution to make. The truth was and still is that the majority of Members are in favour of it.”
“How do we know that? We know that because there are actual, hard facts that show all of that. <BR /> <BR />We were told that the amendment collapsed under scrutiny. The debate last night did not collapse under scrutiny; it collapsed under a petition of concern and the weight of some Members' egos. That is why it collapsed into the mess that it did. Let us not pretend that it collapsed under the weight of argument, because, if Members were as confident about the weight of their argument as they claim to be, a, they would not have signed the petition of concern and, b, they would be here tonight to defend their position”
“When those young people turn up at A&E in Altnagelvin or the Ulster Hospital, it is youth services that provide the guidance for them through the Connect project in Derry and a scheme in my constituency. <BR /> <BR />The dismissal of real expertise, including that of the Youth Justice Agency — people who work not just with young people but with their families, their communities and their peer groups — as worthless is beneath the Chamber. I wanted to put that on record. It spills over into the same nonsense about the work of probation. We get the same nonsense of people treating probation as if it were in some way light-touch, soft and not a real sentence and does not make a real difference when we know that, for short sentences of less than a year, a probation disposal is more effective than a custodial intervention at ending reoffending.”
“Absolutely. That is why we increasingly look to youth workers and youth services to guide young people who are at risk of offending and those who have been the victims or the perpetrators of violence.”
“They deal with some of the most difficult and deprived young people who have faced genuine hardship. Their skills as social workers were dismissed as saying, "Have a sit on a beanbag and a cup of coffee". That is an insult to the work of social workers. I would love to hear the party colleague of the Member who made that insult, who happens to be the Health Minister and responsible for social services, try to justify to his workforce, who sweat blood and shed tears over the vulnerable young people in their care, the view that all they do is set people on beanbags and give them cups of coffee.”
“It is also important that we show leadership in how we engage with one another even when we disagree. In life, we will disagree, but we can do it well or we can do it as some Members did it yesterday and drag everybody into the mire. That does not help the way in which people view the institutions. <BR /> <BR />I will be clear. Allegations were made yesterday that I briefly want to address. My colleague Nuala McAllister has already dealt with what was said about people being incompetent, the legislation having been written on the back of a fag packet and the accusation of legalising rape, all of which was insulting madness. There is also, however, the matter of people in the sector who are experts and work every day with children at that formative stage in their lives.”
“As always, I will comment a little on the debate. You will be aware that the debate took a turn for the worse yesterday; however, I am glad to see that the discussion today has been much more respectful, conciliatory and useful. I cannot imagine why that would be. <BR /> <BR />As you will know, Mr Deputy Speaker, I take seriously issues of process in the Chamber. It is not a matter of, as some have dismissed it, "hurty words". I have heard more hurty words in my time in politics than I have had hot dinners — some will find that hard to believe — but that is not what it is about. It is about decorum in this place and respect for the job that we do. It is an important job; it is a serious job; and it is important that we treat it with the seriousness and dignity that it deserves.”