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.”
The complete record
Every one of 773 lines we hold for Jon Burrows, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 3 of 16.
“I am afraid that I said that Members need to take stock and that, when they are seeking to change fundamental aspects of law, they should exercise a modicum of care and at least do it through a youth justice Bill, for goodness' sake, and not just scribble something on the back of a fag paper and sneak it through for legislation that —.”
“that inciting murder was not included; conspiracy to murder was not included; aiding and abetting murder was not included; but, somehow, attempted murder was included. Offer me a rationale.”
“I am not going to give way to Mr O'Toole. <BR /> <BR />None: not an arrest, not a DNA sample. You would just say to the parents of the dead baby, "Sorry: nothing we can do here. We will ask social services to have a chat with the children. Get the beanbag out and have a sit down, because the United Nation says, 'It's not really a crime'". That is not going to happen under my watch; I can tell you that. <BR /> <BR />When it comes to 12- and 13-year-olds, we established clearly and incontrovertibly, despite, again, the shaking of the head, the protestations and the jumping up and down, saying, "On a point of order, Mr Speaker" to throw Mr Burrows off his stride”
“I established, crucially, that there were two limbs to amendment No 82, that, despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth, murder and rape were not included in the exceptions for 10- and 11-year-olds and that the police could not even arrest a 10- or 11-year-old who committed murder. In an exact replication of the case of Jamie Bulger, who was abducted, tortured and murdered, there could be no criminal justice outcome.”
“— that they knew better and that the perpetrator's rights trumped the victim's rights.”
“justice system. It is an amendment that would completely obliterate the rights of victims, under which, even by its supporters' own statements, those who were victims of the most heinous crimes would not have a choice as to whether the perpetrator could be arrested, charged or brought to justice. It was assumed that the moral high ground occupied by Members to my left was somehow superior to the position of the victim who had been violated —”
“Let me sum up the case, which is overwhelming. This is a bad law. It was proposed in the wrong way, through an amateurish amendment written on the back of a fag paper, and it drives a coach and horses through the fundamental premise of a victim-led”
“You could not even take the DNA of the aider and abetter of a gang rape who might commit further offences: their DNA would never be in the system. It is crazy stuff: because you could not prove or disprove the offence, you would not be able to deal with safeguarding issues when it came to vetting. The person might say, "It wasn't me; I didn't do it", but the police would not be able to prove or disprove that. <BR /> <BR />It is not about a sandpapering of the amendment; it is fundamentally flawed. When I give Members practical examples, they just look me vacantly and say, "Oh, but the UN said —". Well, the UN can get in a plane and fly to Hampshire. It can tell the victim, "Sorry you're not getting justice". It is not acceptable.”
“No, I will not give way at the moment. <BR /> <BR />I will reiterate the point. In the case in England, two schoolgirls were held down and repeatedly raped. That was videoed and shared on social media, The girls were called "slags", and one of the girls said that she wanted to end her life. One of the people convicted of that was convicted of aiding and abetting rape. It is a fact that, if the amendment that is proposed by the Alliance Party and signed by Sinn Féin and the SDLP were to pass, the suspect in circumstances such as those could not even be arrested. That is simply wrong. The victim would have no choice in that. That is not right. That is not the society that we believe in. That is not a society in which you can say, "I value women and girls; what you do is wrong".”
“When we give a real-life example, which causes the nostalgia of Members to my left to collapse under scrutiny, we get howls of protest and distraction.”
“Can I make the point? Let me go through the very points, and we will talk about it precisely. The crime of aiding and abetting rape falls outside the amendment. That is a fact, and it is irrefutable.”
“I am obsessed with talking about victims and why they are seeking justice. You say that I am obsessed with rape. I am obsessed by the fact that people want to legalise it.”
“The Member is quite wrong. Attention to detail when legislating is vital. Rape and attempted rape are included in some of the amendments. Aiding and abetting rape is not. Let us just remember what one of the suspects did to two schoolgirls. They were tied down —”
“I will deal with that very point. Yes, the age of criminal responsibility in England — 10 — is the same. The uproar was because the suspects, despite being arrested, investigated, prosecuted and convicted, did not get a day in prison. That being manifestly unjust caused an uproar. Under this proposal, one of the suspects who aided and abetted the rape could not even be touched. He would not have actually committed a crime.”
“What if the victim is under 16? Why do they not even get a choice? How can you ever say to someone in your constituency, "I am victim-led" or "I am victim-focused", when you say, "We know better than you. I'm removing your ability to ask for a prosecution or investigation because I have higher morals than you and I don't think that you are entitled to it"?”
“I am at a loss as to what the Member is saying. Frankly, what the UN says on this matter does not cut it with victims or the lived experience of many people. <BR /> <BR />We have a youth justice system that is rehabilitative, diversionary, flexible and nuanced, but, suddenly, it would be salami-sliced and shoved into a corner, and the police would not have the flexibility to do their jobs. Yes, we can have rehabilitation and education, but not at the expense of justice, establishing the facts, getting the truth, protecting the vulnerable or saying to a victim that her rights to a prosecution do not matter because of something that the United Nations or the Children's Commissioner say. The Children's Commissioner should represent all children, but he says that no one up to the age of 16 should be brought to account for a criminal offence.”
“You know what? It is not listening. It writes something on a tablet of stone, but you know what? Do you see the young girl from Creggan who is sexually assaulted? Do you see the family bereaved and the old granny who cannot sit out her front because petrol bombs are raining down? "Ah, but the UN says it's not a crime". Let us live in the real world as it is, not the world as the United Nations wishes it to be. If we wanted to go full hog on all this stuff, we would actually —. There are some people who say that they want to go to 18, so there would be no criminal responsibility until 18. Seriously?”
“Thank you for that colourful intervention. Do you see the United Nations? This is what I will say about the United Nations —”
“I will give way, and then I will answer the Justice Minister.”
“I will give way. You are going to talk about 10 to nine, but I am not proposing a change of law.”
“I will in one second. What difference does it make if you are 13 and 300 days or have just turned 14? One day's difference could mean that you could be held responsible for a serious crime and go to prison for years. The day before, you could not even be touched. That does not make sense; it does not make any rational sense whatsoever. We have cliff edge offences.”
“Year after year, at parades, we are able to make arrests, put people under bail — "Don't come out that day, abide by bail conditions, don't have a face covering, don't contact the following victim". All of that, gone. <BR /> <BR />I come now to "Finally", and then I will sum up briefly. We already have a wonderful youth diversion system. Please do not break it with an ill-thought-out Back-Bench amendment. The system has flexibility and nuance and does not have cliff edges. What difference does it make to someone's ability to get justice, or to be held to justice —.”
“There have been suspects who are newcomers in our country and who, like people who are from this country indigenously, have committed extremely serious sexual offences against children, and the police have said, "We can't touch them. They're not even at the age of criminal responsibility". The place would be in flames, and do you know why? It is because the public would say that there is no accountability. <BR /> <BR />There is a gap that we need to fill. That would be wrong; it would send the wrong signal. Our society is rules-based. It has accountability, and it is there to protect. I look at the Members on that side who represent Derry. You know the problems that we have with interface violence. The problem in the Fountain would be exponentially higher if the police could not intervene.”
“<BR /> <BR />I had a privileged upbringing, apart from the fact that we lived under a very high threat. Where I lived, there was no antisocial behaviour to any great extent. There was no danger in the streets, but some people in parts of Northern Ireland do live in very difficult and dangerous areas. They are the ones who will be most exposed. What if an e-scooter ran over a granny or a child and killed them? The offence would be death by dangerous driving, but that is not on the list. This is not to suggest that a suspect's being a migrant should have anything to do with how we treat them, but let me give you a practical example. Look at the disorder last year in Ballymena and think about this for a moment.”
“It would. I was in the community centre in the Fountain that is run by Jeanette Warke MBE, a wonderful lady. After the difficult week that we have had, a really inspiring thing to hear is that children of colour who are in that youth club run up to Jeanette and call her "granny". They are newcomers, and, when they are walking out of that youth club, they have to dodge stones. Even that night, five people attacked the Fountain. People, coming up with golf clubs to attack the Fountain, were arrested. The last children who were arrested there were 11 and 12. What do you want the police to do with them if they cannot even arrest them, if they cannot intervene, if they cannot put them on bail and if they cannot take them home — if they cannot do anything but ask nicely? That is not the way that the world works.”
“I will give way to Mrs Middleton, who knows the Fountain very well.”
“Public protection. Protecting the vulnerable. Supporting those who go astray. Getting the truth. Getting justice. We live in a society where we should be grateful that we have a police service that is remarkably restrained. We have a justice system that is remarkably rehabilitative and puts children in prison only in extremis.”
“That is the reality. It is about the 13-year-old who cannot be controlled. I do feel sorry for those people. At the end of that operation, when we had dealt with about 200 young people, do you know how many we formally put through the criminal justice system? About three.”
“Someone who is towards the end of their life deserves to be able to sit there on a nice day or a nice evening. I get emotional about this. They could sit out in the sun in their 80s and read a book or listen to the birds sing, but that was disrupted because kids in masks were throwing petrol bombs and bricks. The only thing that we could do to stop it, after we had appealed for weeks for parental responsibility, was to arrest, to put in curfews and to use bail conditions. I could not look one of those residents in the eye and say, "I did not do everything that I could to protect you". I gave them an oath in 2007 that I would do so, and I give them that assurance today in this place. I will do nothing that stops the police protecting those 80-year-olds.”
“It was not challenged — in fact, it was accepted — that the ability to investigate, to confirm guilt, to dispel, to exonerate, to impose bail conditions, and to put bail conditions on two people not to conspire, not to be in contact with each other and not to contact a victim — all the tools that the police rely on to keep victims and the public safe — would be robbed of the police. <BR /> <BR />Those are not theoretical examples. About 15 years ago, I launched an operation at the Fountain interface. We released the images of young people who were rioting, week after week, throwing petrol bombs, some of which landed through the window of the residents of Alexander House, which is a nursing home. The elderly people stopped reading at their front window. They had to go to the dark back of the nursing home.”
“Some of the remarks that have been made are disappointing. <BR /> <BR />I go back to the point.”
“I always give way to one of my favourite MLAs.”
“Thank you for the abuse. I do not abuse anyone in the Chamber. I might argue with passion and intensity, but it is always about facts.”
“I have heard from so many experts down the years. I will tell you who I listen to —”
“I will give way to Mrs Long. I always do.”
“This is law based on ideology. It is law based on a progressive fallacy. It is law based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how our youth justice system works. It is law that silences victims and empowers perpetrators. It is law —.”
“I will leave the petitions of concern for one minute. I will come back to them. When I walked into the Chamber, I was under no illusion. I knew that, whatever I said, it would not change the minds of Members here.”
“I do. I have worked with the SDLP for many years in different guises. If you really were to read into this in depth, you would not go along with the amendments. If you had a constituent telling you, "I want justice. I have been subject to serious and repeat violations", you would not go along with saying, "I am sorry, but we passed a law that states that, no matter how serious an impact it had on you, how grave it was or how much it violated you, we have taken away your right. You do not have a voice. Your voice is irrelevant, because we are thinking of the child, and if the same suspect went out to do that to a different constituent, we would say the same thing". I will use every power in my being to stop women and girls being abused with impunity in this society. I make no apology for that.”
“Before I explain why she was wrong, I ask this: what sort of society says to the victim, "We can take an invasive" — I will say it — "vaginal swab from a victim, but we can't take a penile swab from a suspect"? What sort of law is that to pass in this place? It is disgusting that a girl has to wear trousers so that she cannot be upskirted. She said that the victim can give evidence, but the sample needs to be compared. The semen is needed from the suspect in order to compare it with the semen from the victim's vagina. That is the real world. She does not live in it. She is telling me about investigations and victims, but the victim would not be a victim, because there would not even be a crime. Evidence would not be able to be gathered from the suspect. <BR /> <BR />I look at the SDLP. I have the highest respect for the SDLP.”
“The powers of the police would not be criminal powers. Under police child protection laws, the police would be able to detain the child for up to 72 hours and put them in a place of safety, but the law would not allow for a criminal investigation. The police would not be able to take samples. I agree with Mrs Long. Had those children been nine years of age, the police could not have interviewed them or taken samples. We have a system in which 10 is the minimum floor, and there is no good reason to change it. I am not proposing to change it to nine, eight, seven or six. I am not proposing to change it at all. <BR /> <BR />Miss McAllister was wrong when she said that samples could be taken from the victim.”
“I will challenge you. I have put questions to the Minister of Justice, and she has confirmed it in writing. If you set the minimum age of criminal responsibility at 14, the police do not have the power to interview, arrest or take samples, because all of that must be voluntary. Here is a situation that you are in: you put the children in a lottery where, if their parents cooperate —.”
“Miss McAllister is showing that she does not understand the principle of the minimum age of criminal responsibility. The charge is irrelevant. That is how you dispose of a case when you have sufficient evidence. You either charge or you do not. She is quite right; you can gather evidence before a charge is put. If you put the age of criminal responsibility at 14, the police cannot —.”
“I will take an intervention, Miss McAllister.”
“What about the cases where a suspect has committed a sexual offence but the Police Service says, "Well, that is not a crime, so we cannot deal with it", and it cannot take a DNA sample. That DNA is not on the system, meaning that, years later, if that person commits a serious crime and rapes someone as an adult, there is no comparison sample that would lead to their being arrested. Do you even consider those things when you draft these amendments? Do you consider that women in our society could be raped and there would not even be a DNA sample?”
“When the police are able to intervene, they make an arrest. Someone gets bail conditions that state that they are not out during the summer or near the interface or that they cannot go within 200 metres of the victim's house. None of those is applicable. We would wipe away the police's ability to prevent crime. We talked about prevention here, in the woolly, nice sense of sitting down on a beanbag and chatting about it over a cuppa, when there are people who do bad things to innocent victims. Sometimes, you need the law to say, "No, you are not going out tonight", "No, you are on remand", and, "No, you are getting your fingerprints taken". <BR /> <BR />I know that no one wants to listen to the hard facts here.”
“Thank you for that. Are you going to say to someone, "You are going to go into child protection because we think that you have done something heinous", even though they did not do it and have no way of getting it disproved, because the police will not go out and arrest the real suspect. Those are real-life examples that those with criminology degrees and no common sense who belong to the lobby groups and the academic elites do not consider. This is the real world as it is, not as we want to see it. <BR /> <BR />What about repeat offenders? The amendment is silent about repeat offenders. If you have a 12- or 13-year-old who is out of control, the amendment would render the police unable even to put bail conditions on. I know about the attacks on the Fountain interface. It has been under serious attack for decades.”
“If you were accused of a serious crime at 13 and a half years of age — let us say that it was a very serious crime — the police, because they are not able to investigate it, would not be able to eliminate you and identify who the suspects were. I heard constantly from people on the other side of the House that there are other ways of dealing with the suspect, such as through social services. However, if the suspect denies the offence, how do you establish who did it without a criminal investigation? Are you, then, going to say to someone, "You are going to go through the youth" —”
“Can we just be polite to one another? <BR /> <BR />Let me go back to investigative capability. The criminal law is not just about punishment; it is about ascertaining the facts, gathering the evidence, securing justice and proving or disproving an offence. In fact, if you look at the duties of the PSNI, you will see that one of them, alongside bringing offenders to justice, is to prove or disprove offences. Anyone who understands criminal law knows that the police have a duty to find inculpatory evidence, which rules you in, and exculpatory evidence, which rules you out.”
“They would not have the power to arrest the suspects and put them in an identity parade. Members on the other side of the Chamber will say, "That is really just a minor issue, is it not?". It is not a minor issue for the parents of the murdered toddler; the woman who has been upskirted; the victim who has been tied up and raped; the person whose car has been burnt; the person whose home has been burnt down; or the person whose daughter has been driven to suicide by online abuse. Nowhere did I hear that from the Members on the other side of the House. They kept saying, "The children, the children, the children" in the frame of suspects. They talked about "the children, the children, the children" as the victims. The girls who are bullied and assaulted; the women —.”
“<BR /> <BR />Let me turn to investigative capability, which is one of the things that have been missed because of the fundamental misunderstanding of what the minimum age of criminal responsibility is. It affects the ability of the police to investigate a crime. Currently, under the Police and Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1989, the police can carry out a criminal investigation of a crime only if the perpetrator is aged 10 or over. From there comes the power of arrest, interviews, bail conditions, taking samples and fingerprints and putting on an ID parade. <BR /> <BR />Let us go back to the Bulger murder case. Say that we have two suspects and a witness says, "I believe that it was those two", and the police want to arrange an identity parade. Quite simply, they could not.”