Doug Beattie
Upper Bann · Ulster Unionist Party · Northern Ireland
“I absolutely accept what the Minister said earlier, which is that she would not have been able to get such a Bill out of the Executive. That is the sentence that you would have heard from me, Minister, had you waited a minute. I absolutely accept that that is the case, and I think that we all do.”
“Just a minute. Minister, I guess that I disagree with you, because I too did my work. I accept that I do not have the resources that you and your Department have, but I sat with the Public Prosecution Service and talked through this very thing, and it said that it was workable.”
“The Director of Public Prosecutions would look at the seriousness of the offence — death by dangerous driving, risk of harm to the public, serial arson, assault, sexual behaviour that is a danger to the public — and he would also look at the best interests of the child, because we have not got away from diversionary measures here.”
“Had James Bulger been murdered by two nine-year-olds, we would probably be having a discussion about the minimum age of criminal responsibility being nine, such was the anger in 1993 when that horrendous crime took place. All the ages are arbitrary, and we need to deal with that.”
“That raises the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12. It is not what some people, who want it to be 14, want; it is not what others, who want it to stay at 10, want; but I believe that 12 is right. Why do I presume that a child can commit a criminal offence at 12 years of age?”
“In essence, however, that amendment would raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14, apart from in the case of the offences in that closed list. It has been said many times, and I will not repeat what has been said, but the closed list does not make sense to me either.”
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“<BR /> <BR />Amendment No 21 is about training. I am absolutely sympathetic to the first part of it, which would put the duty for training on the Justice Department. We can look at and possibly change that, and I would certainly be happy enough to do that. <BR /> <BR />One thing that I will say about that proposed new clause is that the Minister came before the Justice Committee, and we talked it through. She took away her clause, so ours stood alone. That, to me, is good collaboration. That is exactly how we should do things. We should talk it through and then make a decision, and we can then change it at a later stage. <BR /> <BR />I commend the Minister for taking that approach. However, there are two things in that amendment that are incredibly important.”
“Yes, well. <BR /> <BR />I am not going to rehearse, but I want to feed into a couple of the amendments. Amendment No 18, which is the Operation Encompass piece, is a two-line amendment, but it is so incredibly important. Ms Dillon has been very articulate and steadfast in support of that. I just wanted to say that, because it is really important. The amendment has only two lines, and we hope that we can develop it at Further Consideration Stage. <BR /> <BR />Amendment No 20 is on data collection, which feeds in to pretty much everything. We do not know how things are progressing unless we gather the data to see how they are working. It certainly feeds in to Ms Woods's amendment No 14, which is about legal aid. It is incredibly important that a new clause is in there. Without doubt, I will support it.”
“It is not a great thought, but that would be me.”
“We are fast approaching the witching hour. I am not quite there yet, but it is on its way. I think about this time of sitting at home with a nice glass of an Isle of Jura 18-year-old single malt, with my slippers and pyjamas on”
“Men are suffering, maybe not as many, but they suffer in exactly the same way.”
“I thank the Member for giving way. She has made some really important points, but I want to add a bit of balance, if I may. As we speak, I am getting emails about the very subject that we are talking about. I have received one from a man. It is not always women who are affected; men are affected too. Sometimes, we forget about that. The man who has just emailed me was given custody of his children three years ago but has never been allowed to have access to them. Why? His ex-partner has used the legal aid system to take the case to court in order to keep him away from them. He has had to fight that, and the email that he has just sent to me says, "And now it's too late. My kids are that old that there is no point in fighting on with it". I fully appreciate the Member's point, but I wanted to provide some balance.”
“A little more information on that would help me out, but I am certainly minded to support amendment No 14.”
“At the start I said that I want to finish because I want to hear other Members, and one of the other Members I want hear from is Ms Woods to give us some information on this. I think that Mr Frew will talk about it as well. It says a lot for the Assembly that you can listen to other Members and possibly change your mind on a clause. I am minded to support it. It certainly is a clause that we can get into the Bill and enhance at a later stage, but I would like to hear more information about it. I do not know whether this addresses it or not, but we all know of occasions where one parent in an abuse case is getting legal aid and the other is not and one is financially drying the other one out completely. That is another form of domestic abuse. It is an endless cycle, I suppose.”
“That cycle continued until I got him out of the house and into accommodation. I moved him away from there, and I went through a system of getting him access to his children. <BR /> <BR />The new clause introduced by amendment No 13 is a justified and a good clause, and we should definitely support it. My party will support it. I have absolute sympathy with the Justice Minister, and maybe, in the Further Consideration Stage, we can enhance it. However, it needs to be in the Bill. To use a phrase that has already been used, it needs to be anchored in the Bill. <BR /> <BR />I am absolutely minded to support amendment No 14. We have discussed it with Ms Woods, and I absolutely understand what she is trying to achieve. However, I need it expanded a little more. I do not think that I have as much information as I want.”
“Clearly, the whole Bill is about protecting and supporting the victim in one way or another, and domestic abuse protection orders and notices are one of the ways to do that. <BR /> <BR />I guess that nearly everybody in here has come across someone who has been a victim of domestic abuse in one way or another. I certainly have, and the individual whom I know was a male who was being abused by his wife while the children were in the house. When I say "abused", I mean that he was physically abused. After he had been abused, he would leave the house because that is what men do; they leave the house and leave the children and the wife there. When he went out the door, there was nothing to protect or support him legally. All he could do was traipse back into the house to be abused all over again.”
“I will be brief, because a lot of information has come across already that addresses an awful lot. There is no point in talking just for the sake of talking. There are others who I need to listen to before I can make a fully informed choice, if I am really honest. <BR /> <BR />We absolutely support amendment Nos 9 and 11, which would move the age down from 18 to 16. We understand what it is trying to achieve. It is not ideal, but we will support those amendments. <BR /> <BR />The new clause proposed by amendment No 12 really is welcome. A definition for "child cruelty offence" is really needed. I am glad that the Minister tabled that amendment, because it will give us so much power to protect children. <BR /> <BR />I am struck by this line in amendment No 13:”
“I will certainly support all of the amendments that have been tabled by the Committee.”
“That can come in any form. We must be mindful of that. That is why I said that, although I was happy with clause 9, the amendment ties it down an awful lot more. That is why I support amendment No 7. Of course, we also support amendment Nos 8, 9 and 10. <BR /> <BR />It is a complicated Bill. There is a lot in it. You can read it one way and really twist your mind in a certain direction, only for it to be flipped back when somebody brings in another scenario. We are trying to cast the net as widely as we can to catch all the available scenarios. Some of the amendments tabled by the Justice Minister and certainly those of the Justice Committee do exactly that. It is about trying to capture all of those things. That is why I have been so impressed by the work of the Justice Committee over the past number of months.”
“You are absolutely right. Thank you for that. We cannot shout loudly enough about that or stop saying it. That is the worst possible case. <BR /> <BR />Clause 9 states:”
“Parental alienation is scattered throughout the Bill and is not just in clause 9, but amendment No 7 ties it down for me, and that is why I and my party will support it.”
“Although it does not appear in the Bill — I asked for it to be included, and we had long discussions about it being included — departmental lawyers made it clear that the various clauses in the Bill, including clause 9, will make sure that parental alienation will result in a charge of domestic abuse. <BR /> <BR />Parental alienation happens to so many people in our society. It is not just about denying one parent access to a child; it is about denying a parent access to key milestones in a child's life or their school reports. It is about using a child as a weapon. In its unamended form, clause 9 deals with that in part, but the amendment that has been tabled by Rachel Woods and Paul Frew nails it down for me and makes me happier.”
“We should not just disregard that as someone else's opinion and say that we will not use it. I think that Mr Allister raised some valid points about clause 3, and I will certainly raise those in Committee so that we can tie it down and get it right. I do not want us to get it wrong at the last hurdle after all the good work that we have done. We will look at it and make sure that we understand it. <BR /> <BR />Of course, the Ulster Unionist Party will support amendment Nos 2, 3 and 4. I do not want to dwell on them; we have an awful lot of work to go through. The Ulster Unionist Party will also support amendment No 7. The reason that it will support it is an issue that appears throughout the Bill and one that I raised at Committee Stage: parental alienation and how children are used to abuse other people.”
“That is absolutely reasonable. You could look at various reasons why that is reasonable because what we are trying to do is to look at every possible scenario that that might affect. That includes those with mental health issues who do not know that they are being abused and do not see that that course of behaviour is affecting them. However, others will see it, and they must be able to intervene. That is reasonable. Therefore, although I understand the points that have been made, I cannot support that amendment. <BR /> <BR />I have some sympathy with Mr Allister's objection to clause 3, and there may be something to look at in its wording. In all this, we are trying to be proactive on domestic abuse, but there may be something to look at at Further Consideration Stage.”
“I want to address some of the amendments. I would say one thing before I do, and it is important for people to understand it. Of course, there will be some disagreements between the Minister and the Chair or the Committee and the DOJ, but those frictions are healthy and are what makes legislation work. We have to understand that. We should allow those frictions and deal with them as and when they come up. <BR /> <BR />I cannot support amendment No 1 for the simple reason that I read it and look at it in primary colours. Some people might say that that is a simplistic way to do it, but that is the way that I do business. I look at that amendment in simplistic colours and find:”
“It has been exceptional. I have been an MLA for over four and a half years and this is the first legislation for which I have gone through the scrutiny process. It was a real eye-opener for me in many ways. You can probably see that: I have paper all over the place, and half the time I do not know how we are doing it. I am picking it up as we go along.”
“I have to start by thanking the Minister for bringing the Consideration Stage forward. An awful lot of blood, sweat and tears has gone into the Bill so far, and there is more to come. The Minister and her staff have worked extremely hard. I also have to say thank you to the Chair and the Deputy Chair of the Justice Committee and my fellow Committee members for their scrutiny of the Bill so far.”
“I thank the Minister for keeping me right on the terminology. I noticed that I had that wrong. I was calling them "politically motivated offenders", but they are "terrorist-related offenders". <BR /> <BR />Given that the Probation Board, which provides a fantastic service, finds itself in difficulties when it comes under threat from terrorist organisations, meaning that it has to withdraw its services from certain parts of Northern Ireland, what are we doing to future-proof that so that it does not happen and to ensure that the Probation Board can do its job in areas where threats may exist?”
“First Minister, you will know that I spent three torturous years on the Commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition and produced a report that is now with the Executive Office. Is that report likely to be made public, or is it acting purely as a reference document for the new identity office?”
“I thank the First Minister for her statement and for making it in a timely manner. That is important. I also thank her for her full answers. <BR /> <BR />Given that Christmas is so important to all of the economy and there is always added movement of people over the festive period and looking at the factors that we are drawing from what is being done in other areas, is there any way that there will be a harmonisation of the COVID-19 approach in all jurisdictions over that period?”
“Does the Minister not agree that, in light of contact between domestic terrorist groups in Northern Ireland and international terrorist groups in the Middle East, it would be folly for Northern Ireland, following the end of the transition period, not to align itself with the rest of the UK on the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill?”
“Thank you, Minister. Given that the Executive Committee (Functions) Act (Northern Ireland) 2020 is now law, does that mean that decisions are being made by Ministers that are now outside the scope of the present ministerial code?”
“My supplementary question has been asked. Thank you.”
“<BR /> <BR />The issue here, as many have said, is how we scrutinise a Budget. If it is a one-year Budget, we scrutinise a one-year Budget, but what we really need to do is to scrutinise the Budget next year and the year after and the year after that. We need to look at five-year Budgets. <BR /> <BR />What am I really saying? We need to prioritise our spend. In justice, we have to reduce wastage. In the Executive, we have to prioritise outcomes. What we cannot do is spend money doing one thing, only to spend more money to undo what we have done. That makes absolutely no sense.”
“For the last 10 years, our legal aid accounts have been qualified because of fraud and error — 10 years. Somebody has to ask, "What are you doing to fix it, and, when you have fixed it, when will we see the outcome of a reduced bill for legal aid?". <BR /> <BR />There are many other issues, known and unknown, that we will have to deal with in the coming months and years beyond COVID. Life does not stop at COVID. The implementation of the Stormont House Agreement legacy mechanisms has not been costed into the future. I put it on record now — other people have said differently — that the Ulster Unionist Party does not support it, but it is there, others supported it and it needs to be costed. Likewise, the victims' payment scheme and the institutional abuse scheme need to be costed into the future.”
“As it stands, legal aid spend in Northern Ireland is, per head of population, three times that in Scotland. I am not saying that we just reduce it. The important thing is to make sure that legal aid gets to the people who need it. Access to justice is incredibly important, so I am not saying that we should just cut our legal aid budget. The reality, however, is this: our legal aid budget is so high because justice takes such a long time to deliver. We must reduce how long it takes to deliver justice in Northern Ireland. It is extraordinary how long it takes some cases to come to fruition and how high the bills associated with those cases are. If we can speed up justice, we can reduce that bill. It is incumbent on the Finance Minister, as our money buffalo, to ask the people concerned, "What are you doing to fix this?".”
“When the workload increases, the mental health of staff suffers. Imagine £2·5 million a year going to the Prison Service to address the mental health of prisoners and prison officers. It would be absolutely transformational. <BR /> <BR />Mr Muir was absolutely right: we are spending money on division. We deliberately spend money on division, and we continue to forecast that we will spend money on division. We need to stop. We need to be robust. We need to make difficult decisions about division in our prisons and in our communities. If we stand together, we can do it. Who will be the first Minister to bring that forward? That is the point. Who will be the Minister to dare to take that to the table and say, "I will make a change"? <BR /> <BR />Minister, I also have concerns about the financing of legal aid in Northern Ireland.”
“The big issue is that, having spent money on transition, on supporting our communities and on getting those people off the community's back, we put them in a separated regime and give them back that tag. When released, they go back into the community, and we are back to community transition> All the money that we spent has to be spent all over again. That is ridiculous, but we can stop it. <BR /> <BR />As an Assembly and Executive, we can come together and say that it is time to move on and that we will not pay for a separated regime any more. Some £2·5 million is spent on 40 individuals. Who is suffering? The other 1,500 prisoners suffer because the resources are not there for them. Prison staff suffer because, when money goes to a separated prison regime, staff numbers reduce. When staff numbers reduce, the workload increases.”
“That money is to stop paramilitaries destroying our communities and to treat them as the criminals they are by putting them through the justice system and putting them behind bars. We spend £8 million on that each year, and the Westminster Government give us another £8 million. That is money well spent. It takes the "brigadier" tag off those people, calls them "criminals", puts them through the justice system, which does not give them that huge tag, and puts them in jail. Then we spend up to £2·5 million every year on a separated prison regime, giving the "brigadier" tag back to them. We simply give it back. We spend nearly half a million pounds on accommodation for three people. I live in a three-bedroom house that cost £125,000. You could have built three of them, and they could have had a house each.”
“We are like the consumer who gets his first credit card and spends and spends and does not realise that, eventually, he will have to pay for what he has spent. <BR /> <BR />I have concerns regarding how we scrutinise costed outputs from one Department and costed outputs from another Department. What I am really trying to say is that one Department can have an output and there are costed moneys for it, which is right and proper, only for another Department to do something that is completely at odds with it. I will try to explain what I mean. Money is set aside in the Budget to deal with communities in transition and tackling paramilitary activity, criminality and organised crime.”
“I shall be mercifully brief. I have always been told to raise two or three points and nothing more or lose your audience, so I shall try to keep it to two or three points. That is not to say that they may not be contentious. <BR /> <BR />It is difficult to overplay the financial pressures that we are under regarding COVID and Brexit. We have had to redirect funds from various areas to support our public services and our economy and to shore up our NHS. It is difficult for anybody in the House to say that that is not the right thing to do. It is absolutely the right thing to do. Yet, as we salami-slice our Budget, at times, we are still like children in a sweetie shop. We see everything around us and we want it all.”
“Let us not, let us stop, let us try to work together, and afterwards, when it is gone and we are doing our post-mortem, people can point-score all they want. The bad decisions are not going to go away, but right now we do not need to be too worried about them.”
“You can argue that case, or you can argue the case that we should not have locked down at all. We could instead have pumped all the money into looking after the vulnerable; that is another argument. <BR /> <BR />However, the reality is that our Executive came up with a plan, they delivered that plan, and it is incumbent on every single one of us in the Assembly, whether unionist, nationalist or none, to get behind it, to show the people that we are united and not to bicker any more. I do not want to be standing here in 2021 and still going through this, but, right now, I think that I will be. <BR /> <BR />We are going to have a miserable Christmas, but we will be here and we will be alive. What I do not want is to be doing this again next year and to have people, in whatever form, using it for party political point-scoring.”
“However, right now, we do not need a unionist or a nationalist COVID: we just need to fight it. We need to stop it from killing our people, and, if we can do that, those same people who are keeping us safe — the doctors and the nurses — can concentrate on people who have heart disease and cancer. It takes 100 nurses to run the ICU beds. They need to be working somewhere else. <BR /> <BR />We can look at these restrictions from two or three weeks ago, which have been superseded by new restrictions, and argue, "Do you know what? This should have been a hard lockdown. We should have gone all out in the way that we did in the spring. Do it, have the mitigations in place and make sure that the money, the funding and the financial package is there for businesses".”
“We are standing here talking about amendment regulations from two or three weeks ago. Although that is nobody's fault, if I am really honest, it is slightly nonsensical. Let us set measures and put in the mitigations as quickly as we can. We saw the numbers growing and the deaths increasing. If our Executive are meeting and saying that they saw this coming, they should have been ready for it and put in the measures straight away. We should not be waiting until today for the financial package to be put in place for businesses. If we saw this coming, that should have been done on the day that the measures were released. That is what we have to do. <BR /> <BR />Let us not allow this to become a sectarian issue. Of course, people have made mistakes, and we will all be able to carry out the post-mortems on those mistakes in the months to come.”
“We all have to admit that, in doing this, we could be destroying people's livelihoods. It is the trade-off that we have made and that we need to understand, and yet people complain about wearing a face covering and social distancing. I just do not understand it. I absolutely hate wearing a mask, but — I have said this before — if I can save the health or life of just one person by wearing a mask, I will wear a mask. It is not too much to ask. If, by wearing a mask, I can get an older person to feel a little more comfortable about being out and about, I will wear a mask. It is not difficult. If I have to social distance, I will do all that I possibly can to stay socially distanced. <BR /> <BR />What people want from us is consistency, and they want us to be proactive rather than reactive.”
“Six people died today of coronavirus-related illnesses. Many more people died due to heart disease or cancer. We put in these restrictions to try to save lives and to help people's health. If those restrictions helped people with heart disease or cancer, we would put them in without thinking twice.”
“Standing here, I do not know what to say that has not already been said time and again.”
“The Communities in Transition programme has some great initiatives, but, like the Member on the opposite Benches, I am not seeing the outputs from what we put in. It is just not kicking out. How are we measuring the outputs, given the rise, in our constituency, of paramilitary and terrorist activity?”
“— and that is why the motion is so important.”
“Absolutely. Northern Ireland might be the endgame, but it is not the starting point. Chains of people bring people into Northern Ireland for human trafficking, purely to make money. That is all it is for. That human misery is to do nothing other than make money. <BR /> <BR />The Ulster Unionist Party will never apologise for standing up for the victim, and, if victims want to go home, let them go home. If they want to stay here, let them stay here and let us support them. If they need asylum, let us give it to them, and let us make sure that victims get the choice. <BR /> <BR />I am 55 today, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is my birthday. I was in my mid-30s when I came across that scene. It has stayed with me since, but I walked away from it. Other people are still living it —”
“If they are from Northern Ireland, they must get a long custodial sentence to act as a deterrent. If they are not from here and have abused the system to come here to make a better life for themselves only to engage in human trafficking and slavery, they should do their custodial sentence, and then we send them home. Get them out of here.”
“I accompanied one girl back to her family — a 19-year-old girl — and saw that sense of joy on the faces of her family at the return of their daughter, because they thought that she had been killed in the war. I then watched their faces turn to absolute devastation when they realised what their daughter had just been put through. <BR /> <BR />This is human misery. Human trafficking, exploitation and slavery are about human misery, and it happens here in Northern Ireland. If we do not future-proof our legislation, it will come here more and more in the years to come. Last year, there were, I think, 59 cases of human trafficking. That will do nothing but increase, and those people who are responsible for it should be subject to the full rigours of the law.”
“There is a feeling of fear, a feeling of hopelessness and a feeling of despair among those poor wretched beings. <BR /> <BR />I saw something similar in 1995 when I was in Bosnia when the Dayton Agreement was being signed. That agreement created a space for criminal gangs to operate in, and, yes, they did operate, and their target was young women for sexual exploitation. I went back to Bosnia in 2004 and it was still happening. They had just got more sophisticated. I returned in 1999, and, when I think about those women whom I found in that car showroom, I remember that it took six days to get them to Pristina hospital and then back to their families.”
“There was, however, another commodity: people, mostly women, some who were as young as 14 years of age. They were being kept in inhumane conditions. They had been beaten, sexually assaulted, starved and drugged. You may think that I have seen a movie where something like that was shown, and you have probably seen a movie that looks like that. Let me tell you: it is nothing like that when you come across the real thing and see bodies huddled together, fearful and frightened. That smell of body odour, alcohol, drugs, toilets full of human faeces backed up because there are no sanitary conditions, piss-stained mattresses, piss-stained clothing, that coppery taste of blood on your tongue that you kind of imagine but is actually there from the beatings and from the women not being given menstrual products.”
“Prizren is close to the border with Albania and North Macedonia. Of course, it was not North Macedonia then; it was the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. In that car showroom, there were no cars. The cars had either been stolen or sold. Probably stolen, then sold.”