Jon Burrows
North Antrim · Ulster Unionist Party · Northern Ireland
“It is invasive for someone to be cross-examined by the person who has caused them grave trauma and great hurt — the person who has victimised them. Cross-examination can be done by legal counsel, which is sound.”
“It is adversarial for good reason, but there are really important things that we can do when it comes to process, the system, dealing with cross-examination, disclosure and character references. I hope that we have a victims and witnesses commissioner who is the loudest and strongest voice for victims.”
“I agree. I rang one of the victims on the evening after the conviction and apologised. Even though I had no role over Mr Campbell, I said that I was ashamed that that man, Lloyd-Lavery, was ever employed by the party or by an MLA and ashamed that the man who gave him a character reference was a former chair of our party.”
“I welcome the Bill. It is long overdue, because our justice system in Northern Ireland is tilted towards the interests of suspects and perpetrators over and above the interests of victims and the general public.”
“There is always a balance to be struck between the rights of an unconvicted person who has been accused of a crime and the rights of the victim, and we need to get that balance right. We should never forget that there have been miscarriages of justice in our country down through the years.”
“<BR /> <BR />The Education Minister should have included the measure in the School Uniforms (Guidelines and Allowances) Bill. That would have achieved it far more efficiently, but it was not done.”
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“I oppose the motion. It is divisive, negative, fails to learn the lessons of Brexit or our past and wastes time dealing with matters that we have no authority over. Frankly, if we are building something in Northern Ireland, it should not be an office for bureaucrats in Belfast but homes for young people. We are short of homes in Northern Ireland. This shows that our focus is entirely on the wrong thing. <BR /> <BR />Brexit was divisive and negative, and I say that as a lifelong Eurosceptic. The EU is an organisation that was committed to ever closer union, was not very democratic and was tin-eared to reform. David Cameron tried to strike a deal but got nowhere.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.”
“Those are serious issues, which pose serious concerns about the integrity, fitness for office and security clearance of the Police Ombudsman, but we cannot get any answers. <BR /> <BR />Last year, I revealed that there were no powers to suspend an ombudsman, even if they were charged with murder. If they were out on bail, they could walk into their office. Too many people have been asleep at the wheel for too long in relation to the ombudsman's office. I call on the Executive Office and the Justice Minister to urgently clarify the position of the Police Ombudsman and update the House.”
“That decision is hugely consequential, because the Police Ombudsman has been, off and on, absent from work for a significant period. There has been much speculation about the inability to suspend the Police Ombudsman, yet there was an opportunity to take that resignation right at the outset of the incident. <BR /> <BR />There are further concerns. There is clear and unchallenged evidence that the Police Ombudsman, during the incident at her home and in the days after, discouraged a member of her own staff from providing a statement to the Police Service about a live criminal investigation and that she divulged confidential information about an ombudsman investigation to a family member, who then confronted a third party with that information.”
“On 9 October this year, the PPS determined that there was insufficient evidence to proceed, and Ms Anderson is, as a matter of law, innocent. However, serious questions about conduct remain. <BR /> <BR />Shortly after the incident, the media asked the Department of Justice and the ombudsman organisation whether Ms Anderson had tendered her resignation after the incident. They refused to answer. I can now report that Ms Anderson tendered her resignation on 24 September 2023 at 9.38 pm to the permanent secretary at the Department of Justice. Within one hour, the DOJ permanent secretary had said that the resignation would be parked and no action would be taken. I want to know who was involved in making that decision. Was there any political involvement? Why was such a decision made in such rushed way on a Sunday night?”
“I address a matter of immense public interest. There are no outstanding criminal proceedings in relation to this matter. <BR /> <BR />The office of Police Ombudsman is one of the most significant in Northern Ireland. The ombudsman exercises vast powers, is paid a vast salary, has ongoing access to top-secret material, investigates the most serious complaints against police officers and issues legacy reports to this day. <BR /> <BR />Following an incident at Marie Anderson's house on the 22 to 23 September, the West Midlands Police Service conducted a lengthy police investigation. It submitted a file to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) for the offences of perverting the course of justice and misconduct in public office.”
“<BR /> <BR />Training, a fair fee system and getting the disciplinary processes and safeguarding processes right are really important issues that I look forward to contributing on in the scrutiny stage. We will not divide the House at this stage, and I am glad that there will be a professional body to set, uphold and role-model standards, as long as that is done properly.”
“It is also a safeguarding risk, because, when that person resigns and the school takes their resignation, three years later, they pop up in another school. It happens in my old job: people pop up in another police service. That has happened time and time again, and those things to be need sorted out at the start as opposed to being dealt with later on. Of course, there are tricky issues to discuss, because it could be that a teacher wants to resign and that it is better for the public purse for the school to let them resign rather than go through years of having to prove a case against them. In that situation, how do you update the system to make sure that they are not allowed to practise? Those are all the little things that need to be finely looked at in the scrutiny stage.”
“It cannot be lost on us that there is a danger of getting a culture that does not obtain learning from that. <BR /> <BR />When it comes to safeguarding, first, it is important for fitness-to-practise certificates to be properly policed. That will require good information sharing across every part of the two islands, effectively, so that we do not have teachers moving around and avoiding the fact that their fitness-to-practise certificate has been withdrawn. Secondly, we also need to be sure that there is clarity from the outset on issues such as allowing people to resign during an investigation. That has bedevilled many organisations: someone is under investigation, they ask to resign and the school allows them to do so. That needs to be sorted out up front, because it damages public confidence.”
“<BR /> <BR />That is why, at the outset, you need to strip it down into two or three different lanes. Is it a matter of performance of learning? If it is, deal with it in that way, quickly. Is it misconduct? If it is proven and it is minor, let us get it dealt with quickly and locally. If it is the serious stuff, where someone's career is at risk, let us make sure that the teacher is properly represented; that whoever is running the investigation and the panel to decide on their future is properly trained and compliant with things such as civil disclosure regulations that will apply; that there is transparency and fairness; and that we do not end up bogged down for years, with teachers working under huge pressure and with huge workloads.”
“The centralised systems should kick in where there is high-level misconduct that could, if proven, result in someone losing their job. That is where you really need investigators to understand their job, which is to get inculpatory and exculpatory evidence that rules people in and out of an inquiry and to understand the rules of disclosure. The professional body that will adjudicate on guilt or innocence must also understand all those things, including disclosure and how to run a proper hearing, because someone's job is at risk. Unfortunately, a lot of those bodies cannot separate the wheat from the chaff. They end up so bogged down in so many minor cases that the real problem teacher slips through the net or, as I have seen in the police and other bodies, sits suspended for years on full pay.”
“There are some key points that we will need to focus on at the next stage. First, if the body is to deal with discipline, it will need, at an early stage of investigating an issue, to differentiate between issues of conduct that are about integrity and those that are about performance. Safeguarding and ethical issues need to be clearly separated from learning and competence issues. Those things must be dealt with in totally different ways: that is really important. <BR /> <BR />The second point is that we must not get bogged down, with everything being dealt with in a centralised and slow way. It is important that, if the misconduct is minor at most, the teacher knows at the earliest stage that their career is not at threat and that the issue will be dealt with quickly, efficiently and locally.”
“Often, the investigators think that their job is to find fault, as opposed to the facts, and to exonerate the innocent as well as find the guilty. I wanted to put that on the record.”
“There are a lot of substitute teachers working in our schools, and we need to make sure that they are catered for in that provision. It is right that teachers pay a fee to a body, but it must be set fairly and be value for money. <BR /> <BR />Where I really want to bring some insight to the Bill, however, is on disciplinary procedures. I was previously involved in running what is, effectively, a regulated body for the police: the PSNI's professional standards department, That is a stand-alone, regulated professional body for the police. Disciplinary bodies can make many mistakes when they are first created. They tend to become slow and disproportionate; focus on finding blame instead of finding learning; and bring great stress to those who are investigated.”
“I am glad to speak to the Second Stage of the General Teaching Council Bill. This is the first piece of legislation that I will be involved in end-to-end, so I look forward to providing some real scrutiny. I want to put some high-level points on the record, but there will be detailed scrutiny at the Bill's further stages. <BR /> <BR />The first point is that it is right that there is a professional body that sets and uphold standards for teachers. Of course, that body must role-model those standards, which was not the previously the case. The second point is on the requirement for teachers to have ongoing training, which is in the Bill. It is important that the management of that is thought through for workloads and substitute teachers.”
“Will he clarify how many critical, trained negotiators there are within the NHS in Northern Ireland? He says that they are able to deal with this.”
“Give us a ring if he leaves" is this: if that person leaves and self-harms, we have an ombudsman who will punitively investigate the police officer and spend years trying to find fault, and we have politicians in this place who will call for the head of the police officer. My former colleagues will sometimes say, "It is easier just to stay in the ED because I do not want to risk my career". <BR /> <BR />If you want to take the Right Care, Right Person approach, you need to put support round the Police Service so that, when it takes risk-based decisions, you will support it and not throw it under the bus. The fact that we are where we are is a reflection of society as a whole and of the Police Service that has, in fact, been created by the very people in the room who are now attacking the health service, which is disappointing.”
“I will not at this stage. <BR /> <BR />There are lots of reasons why the Police Service deals with "concern for safety" calls. By the way, the police have skilled negotiators who sometimes have to spend eight hours talking someone off a bridge. Only the police have those skills. <BR /> <BR />A separate issue is emergency departments. That is a killer for police morale and time. Here is a brutal fact: one of the reasons why the Police Service in this country does not feel able to say no at times or to take a measured risk and tell the security in a hospital, "Keep an eye on that individual. We got him in here safely.”
“It would have worked with multiple agencies, such as the Housing Executive and education service, to try to problem-solve a case so that the police did not get repeat "concern for safety" calls.”
“It has the equipment, training, experience and vital police powers. A further issue is that, often, the police are the only people with the ability to force entry into a house or do emergency checks — for example, on someone's mobile phone — to determine their well-being. <BR /> <BR />The next thing that we fail to acknowledge is that the reason why the police attend so many "concern for safety" calls is that their resources have been run down so badly that they do not have enough neighbourhood police to do proactive problem-solving. That is one reason why we have seen an increase in "concern for safety" calls. What used to happen was that your neighbourhood policing team would have looked at your profile of "concern for safety" calls and carried out a follow-up.”
“They mostly do not self-harm; they go from nothing to personal crisis and suicide. Often, there is no warning sign. That is why the Police Service has to respond, often as the first emergency service that has vehicles out on the ground, to help someone in a moment of need. <BR /> <BR />The second thing that people do not understand is that, often, when dealing with someone with mental health problems, the Ambulance Service needs the police because, whilst we might not like to say it, people with a mental health problem are often extremely violent. They spit. They have weapons. They have knives. They have flags against them that show that they have a propensity for violence. Often, the Police Service sends a resource to protect the people who are our front-line emergency services.”
“Separate the "concern for safety" calls from the issue of spending too much time in emergency departments, effectively babysitting people whilst the health service get ready for them. <BR /> <BR />We need to understand what police face when they respond to "concern for safety" calls. The first thing is that it is a whole-society and whole-Executive issue that people find themselves presenting in a moment of personal crisis. It might be someone standing on a bridge in Derry/Londonderry, where I used to work, ready to throw themselves off. Often, that is due to domestic violence, homelessness, a gambling addiction or some issue in their life that any number of Departments could be responsible for trying to fix. We have seen the statistics on male suicide. More than seven out of 10 suicides are men.”
“When I say "paramilitary", I do not mean it in the sense of Northern Ireland's paramilitaries, but in the sense of "semi-military". It is not an auxiliary force. It is not a pure law-enforcement agency like the National Crime Agency. It is a police service. It has dealt and always will deal with more than simply crime. It is right that it deals with vulnerability and has that at the heart of everything that it does. <BR /> <BR />Let me just divide two things, because they are entirely different matters. I spent thousands of hours in the police dealing with mental health issues and trying to solve the fact that my officers were spending huge amounts of time on mental health issues.”
“I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion. It is a pity that it is a somewhat simplistic motion that fails to understand the true complexities within which the police operate and with which people present themselves to police, often in an emergency. It should be said at the outset that our Police Service has been under-supported, under-resourced, over-scrutinised and let down by the political class in general in Northern Ireland. It is important to understand that context, and I will explain it as I go through my remarks. <BR /> <BR />Before I do so, I just want to explain the model of policing that we hold dear in this country. I will tell you why that is directly linked. It is not a paramilitary model of policing.”
“Has the Member, as a mental health lead, spent any time on patrol with PSNI officers to see how they deal with mental health emergencies?”
“In 2013, my officer and colleague Philippa Reynolds was killed by a career criminal, Shane Frane. He rammed her police car and was convicted of manslaughter. The sentence that he got was paltry: a minimum term of six years. He was out not long after that. Will you urgently review your thoughts on Harper's law and make it an absolute priority to protect our police officers from such paltry sentences?”
“That is the reality of policing. That is why we need resourcing, and it is why we should support our Police Service and remember that there are thousands more victims out there and that we need to get dealing with them and support our police.”
“Those officers did not get to see the OHW at all. Therefore, resources are at the heart of the failure to catch McCartney, but they are also at the heart of our Police Service, which is suffering attrition rates of 300 officers a year. That is a problem. We talk about recruitment, but you can keep recruiting until you get to the stage where you do not get to retain your supporting officers. <BR /> <BR />We also talk about prioritisation. Our police officers work in a job in which every decision has more consequences than you can possibly imagine. There could be three phones: if you do not examine one of them first, millions of pounds worth of drugs will flood our community; if you do not examine another, a police officer will be shot in the next six weeks; and if you do not examine the other, a child predator will continue to offend.”
“He does not mind me mentioning his name — Detective Sergeant Neil McGuinness — and I know the impact that it had on him. At least five officers have been medically retired as a result of the investigation — two from cybercrime and three from the child abuse investigation unit. They saw image after image and video after video of things that you never want to have in your brain. However, one of the problems is that this team is so small and under-resourced that the officers do not get sufficient breaks and cannot take a gap between viewing images. They are against a ticking clock. None of those officers on that investigation got to see the occupational health and well-being (OHW) department, even though there should be routine screening of the police officers who are watching that level of images.”
“The reality is that, because of resources, the police in such cases get to a point where they identify enough victims to get a case across the line; someone makes a policy decision that they are going to have to stop; they go into safeguarding mode and try to identify vulnerable victims just so they can safeguard them; and then they come to the decision that there are thousands of victims whom they will not even try to trace, because policing has to go on and the suspect is in prison. Therefore, we do not know the scale of harm that that man caused. <BR /> <BR />I pay tribute to the child abuse investigation unit that tracked him down. It was a global case; it was a threat on an industrial scale. I know one of the investigators.”
“Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. Alexander McCartney was an evil and depraved man. He should never walk the streets again. I know a little bit about his offending. We talk about sextortion and blackmail. This was a man who got children to do things to themselves for his sexual gratification, and he tortured them and tortured them to keep doing those things, and sometimes that involved abusing their siblings. That is how evil this man was. He caused the death of Cimarron Thomas and her father, Benjamin. However, the scale of harm that he caused is unquantifiable.”
“There is an element of aspiration, however: if we can find a way to increase the provision of school meals, make them sociable and about learning and create a sense in children, away from screens, of sharing food together on a greater level, it will help not just nutrition but a range of social things. That would be really powerful. <BR /> <BR />There are good things in the motion. It is fair to say that it is aspirational. We certainly do not expect the Minister to write a cheque for £200 million.”
“It may not be today, tomorrow or even for some time, but if, somehow, the Executive can take a leap of faith and have a real ambition to fund, through different Departments, the opportunity for children of all ages, particularly primary-school children, to sit down together and have a free school meal with different types of healthy food, I wonder whether that might have a transformational impact on outcomes in health, opportunities and reliance on benefits in 20, 30 or 40 years' time. That is why I look at the motion with ambition. It is not about hammering the Minister, who has a difficult job to do. The money is not immediately there to do this.”
“I spent some time with one union and several teachers, and we talked about the inequalities in our society: there are children who will live much longer than others, and there are children who will have much lower life opportunities.”
“Inflation goes up, and food prices go up, and we understand that it puts pressure on school meal prices, but it should be the last thing to increase. In particular, a 20% increase is very difficult to budget for. I know that, probably because of the laudable effort of trying to avoid school meal price increases, we almost get to the point where we have to increase them by more than the cost of inflation. There is learning there in that, if we are going to increase them, it would actually be better and easier for families to budget if it were done incrementally and gradually, even if it came to the same amount. That said, I still think that the increase in school meal prices should be reviewed. <BR /> <BR />The real ambition that I would love to get to is this.”
“In the intervening time, for parents who could not afford the meal, the schools were actually paying for it, but there is no mechanism to recoup that money. In the broad scale of things, it would not cost a significant amount to have a policy tweak that, if you apply for free school meals and are successful, any outlay in the intervening time, whether by the school or the parents, could be reimbursed. That is the way that it has been explained to me. It is a small thing, which would probably not be a huge cost, but that would certainly help. <BR /> <BR />On the recent increase in the price of school meals, we are not a party that lives in a utopia of, "This is free; this should be free and that should be free".”
“I have been going around schools in the past number of weeks, particularly primary schools so far, and it is very clear how important the free school meals are, but it is also clear that people who are just outside the eligibility suffer significantly. That is why I think that the argument to raise the eligibility for free school meals is important. <BR /> <BR />Whilst dealing with the issue of free school meals, I want to touch on another issue, which is a very tangible thing, and perhaps the Minister could give it some thought. When I spoke to two principals, they told me that those who apply for free school meals have to wait six weeks or so for the checks to go through and to be told that they are eligible for the free school meal.”
“It is an important motion, and not one that I will use in any way to score points over. It raises a real issue about how we can better support our young people. I agree that it cuts across many Departments: Education, Health, Communities and Justice. In the long-term aspiration, there is a real test as to whether, as an Executive and a body politic, we are committed to real prevention and to improving life, health and society outcomes and that we can commit to something that is really ambitious, even if the money is not obviously available right now. Let me just preface say that by saying that free school meals are very important.”
“We still have a criminal justice system that always seems to put the perpetrator first and the victim last, which has the greatest impact on our women. <BR /> <BR />On International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, I acknowledge the suffering across the globe —”
“I heard Ms Egan outline the progress that has been made, but I just do not recognise that progress. We still have the slowest justice system in the UK, and that is the biggest enabler of domestic and sexual violence, because the perpetrators tactically delay their plea until the very last minute, hoping that the victim drops out because they do not have the emotional resilience to stay in a lengthy process that takes two or three years. However, there is no extra sentence at the end of it. We have the softest justice system. Only today it is in the news that a man who was convicted of three assaults on women in a park in Comber got a £100 fine for each assault. That is what you would get for a parking ticket. What motivation was there for the women to come forward, give evidence and take a day off work?”
“<BR /> <BR />In Afghanistan, there is now an elimination of women from public life. Women are banned from education. Girls over the age of 11 are banned from education. Women are not allowed to teach boys in school, which has resulted in primary-school girls being withdrawn. Some women are not even allowed to have their voices heard in public. There are no protests, no campaigns, no passion, no commentary. If the Afghan cricket team were to come here, there would be no calls for it to be boycotted. It is as if that violence against women and girls does not exist. <BR /> <BR />In Northern Ireland, we suffer from extremely high levels of violence against women and girls.”
“On International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women I acknowledge some of the suffering of women across the globe before turning to what is happening in Northern Ireland. <BR /> <BR />I want to touch on the treatment of Christians in Nigeria at the moment, which gets little news coverage because it does not satisfy an ideology, in contrast with things that happen in the Middle East. We saw, just last week, more than 300 schoolchildren taken hostage, a terrible reminder of the 276 schoolgirls taken hostage by Boko Haram in Chibok in 2014. One hundred of those girls are still missing, and every one of them will have been subjected to sexual violence or will be living in constant fear of it. We never hear of protests, flag waving or emotion here about the plight of women in those countries.”
“I will raise an issue that is difficult, but I will try to do so in a sensitive way. This is in no way prejudicial to the vast majority of people who follow Islam, but there have been examples of Islamic preachers who have preached hatred and extremism or for the subservience of women under men. Will any steps be taken to ensure that any religion that is coming into our schools and being preached by someone or explained to our pupils is not inconsistent with our values, which are that women are not subservient to men and have full equal rights in our society?”
“Does the First Minister agree that, although we should celebrate lawful migration, any foreign national who commits sexual violence against our women here in Northern Ireland should be swiftly deported from the country?”
“Outdoor learning is not a luxury but an essential that should be mainstreamed in our curriculum. The outworking of that will be healthier bodies and minds and more-rounded students, who will benefit Northern Ireland in the years to come.”
“I have met teachers and unions over the past number of weeks, and they are very keen on the idea. All the obstacles that we talk about, such as capability and capacity, are easily dealt with. <BR /> <BR />We also need a healthier attitude to risk, and outdoor learning can help with that. We have become a society that worries about children bouldering on a river but that lets them go upstairs to be subjected to a world of, frankly, evil, often without any supervision. There is huge risk online. A healthier attitude to risk comes from learning how to do outdoor activities safely. Teachers also need to have a healthier attitude to risk. If they have support and training and know that someone will stand by them, they can enjoy outdoor activities safely and healthily. <BR /> <BR />I support the motion.”
“I was particularly struck by an article in the paper at the weekend about the impact that opportunities for outdoor experiences and thus a more-rounded education have on academic ability. James Parkinson, the Pearson National Teaching Awards winner of the head teacher of the year in a primary school award, introduced a not dissimilar initiative in a struggling school to give children experiences in the outdoor world, and the school's results went from the bottom 10% nationally to the top 13%. Doing that did not cost money. Rather, it required a little bit of emphasis and focus. We therefore need to summon our inner MacGyver or Bear Grylls and put outdoor experiences at the heart of the curriculum so that our young people learn skills that will stand them in good stead for years. Our teachers yearn for that.”
“With regard to capacity, we have a workload review and a curriculum review, so there are opportunities to carve out more time for our teachers. There is a lot of bureaucracy. Teachers tell me about the various portals to which they have to log in. Those could be streamlined to create extra capacity for teachers to deliver outdoor learning.”
“It is not just a conveyor belt of children with the grades to go on to university. It is about them developing life skills that will help them navigate the world personally, in their families and communities, as well as in the workforce. <BR /> <BR />I will also link the issue to the recent shocking statistics around young men who are ending their lives in Northern Ireland. Suicide is the greatest cause of death amongst men under 50. It is vital that we learn how to interact with nature to deal with things like depression. <BR /> <BR />Of course, there are challenges. We talk about money, capacity and capability, but those are things that you get over and sort out. They do not cost a lot of money. That is something that the Forest School Association was keen to say: you can do a lot with very little. We have a lot of natural resources.”
“I will cause a shock wave by saying that I agree entirely with the Alliance Party motion, and I am glad to support it. Outdoor learning, and the development of an outdoor learning strategy, is not a luxury. It is essential, more than ever, because we are seeing real challenges with mental health, addiction to screens, development, children being sociable with other young people and physical health. We have also seen the exponential rise in children with special educational needs. I read an article in yesterday's 'The Sunday Times' in which teachers talked about having children coming to their schools who can swipe a screen but cannot speak. Outdoor learning is, therefore, vital. Outdoor learning is also vital in helping us to change our perception of the education system.”