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OFFICIAL REPORT (Hansard) Committee for Justice OFFICIAL REPORT (Hansard) Draft Programme for Government 2016-2021 and Delivery Plans: Department of Justice 10 November 2016 NORTHERN IRELAND ASSEMBLY Committee for Justice Draft Programme for Government 2016-2021 and Delivery Plans: Department of Justice 10 November 2016 Members present for all or part of the proceedings: Mr Paul Frew (Chairperson) Mrs Pam Cameron (Deputy Chairperson) Mr Alex Attwood Ms Clare Bailey Mr Doug Beattie Mr Roy Beggs Ms Michaela Boyle Mr Sammy Douglas Mr Declan Kearney Mr Trevor Lunn Mr Pat Sheehan Witnesses: Ms Louise Cooper Department of Justice Mr David Lavery Department of Justice Mr Steven McCourt Department of Justice Ms Karen Pearson Department of Justice The Chairperson (Mr Frew): I welcome to the Committee David Lavery, director of access to justice; Steven McCourt, head of community safety division; Karen Pearson, head of protection and organised crime division; and Louise Cooper, deputy director of rehabilitation and reducing offending directorate. They are all from the Department of Justice. You are all very welcome. I advise you that the session will be recorded by Hansard and the transcript will be published on the Committee web page. Without further ado, David, you will be leading off, I am sure. Mr David Lavery (Department of Justice): Thank you, Chair. With your permission, I will make some introductory remarks. My colleagues and I are grateful for the opportunity to brief the Committee this afternoon on the Department's role in delivering the commitments set out in the draft Programme for Government. As you said, Chair, I have colleagues with me who lead on the three indicators for which the Department is immediately responsible. Steven McCourt leads on indicator 1, which is the prevalence rate of crime. Karen Pearson leads on indicator 38, which is the average time to complete criminal cases. Louise Cooper leads on indicator 39, which is the rate of reoffending. In addition to explaining our commitments under the Programme for Government, I would like to take the opportunity to outline our problem-solving justice approach and why we think it is pivotal to the successful delivery of our commitments. The Committee will, of course, be aware that the Programme for Government has been developed using an outcomes-based accountability (OBA) approach that 1 encourages cross-departmental, collaborative working and external stakeholder engagement to successfully deliver the desired outcomes. Outcomes-based accountability will challenge us to measure our success by looking at the impact our programmes have on people's lives. As the Committee will know, the draft Programme for Government consists of 14 high-level outcomes that describe the societal impacts that the Executive want to make, and, under each outcome, there are a number of associated indicators that will be used to monitor whether the desired change is happening. Delivery plans have been developed that set out what will be done during the mandate to achieve these outcomes. Chair, you have already read out to the Committee the text of outcome 7, which is a commitment to: "a safe community where we respect the law, and each other". It was encouraging to us that, when the Programme for Government framework was consulted on over the summer, there was strong support for that commitment. Below that, we have five primary indicators, and the Department of Justice leads on three of them. They are the three that I mentioned: indicator 1, the prevalence rate of crime; indicator 38, the average time taken to complete cases; and indicator 39, the rate of reoffending. Draft delivery plans for each indicator were provided to the Committee at the end of August, and since then, they have been updated and published alongside the draft Programme for Government for public consultation. The delivery plans outline what the Department of Justice, in collaboration with others, will do to bring about measurable improvements. In addition to the three primary indicators that we lead on, the Executive Office has developed delivery plans for the remaining two indicators that are relevant to outcome 7. These are indicator 26, which is concerned with a respect index, and indicator 35, which is about the percentage of the population who believe that their cultural identity is respected by society. In approaching the challenges at the heart of outcome 7, we intend to place a particular emphasis on problem-solving justice. Problem-solving justice is a person-centred approach and will be familiar to the Committee from the report on 'Justice in the 21st Century', published by its predecessor at the end of the last mandate. Problem-solving justice recognises that the causes of much offending behaviour lie outside the immediate justice sphere. Poor parenting, educational underachievement and mental health problems are just some of the factors that can predispose some individuals to offending behaviour. In collaboration with colleagues from the Department of Health, the Department for Communities and the Department of Education, we intend to adopt a problem-solving approach to our Programme for Government commitments. Problem-solving justice is therefore at the heart of our delivery plans, and our aim is to divert people away from offending but, where they do offend, to offer them the appropriate support to turn their life around. As part of that approach, we have identified a portfolio of initiatives, including domestic violence courts; multi-agency concern hubs, which offer support to vulnerable individuals and families; an enhanced combination order sentencing option, which will provide community alternatives to prison; and substance misuse and family, drug and alcohol courts. Initial discussions on the use of problem- solving justice have been extremely positive. The judiciary and the wider justice family in Northern Ireland are supportive of the approach, as are colleagues from other Departments. We are now at the stage of engaging directly with the public to ensure that the Programme for Government and associated delivery plans reflect the wider views of society. The Department will arrange a number of stakeholder events to gather feedback from as wide a range of organisations and people as possible. In addition, we will use an online survey to gather views from individuals who cannot attend the public events. That is all that I wish to say at this stage by way of an introduction. I and my colleagues will be happy to answer your questions. The Chairperson (Mr Frew): OK. David, thank you very much for, as always, being clear and concise in your presentation. That is very helpful as we are always struggling for time. Whilst I know the new format of the Programme for Government and support the idea of it being outcomes based, it is still hard to read across to the indicators, outcomes and methods used in and between. Whilst we want and have a holistic approach from the Executive, it is, again, still hard to read across to who is responsible. Usually, when it is everybody's responsibility, it becomes nobody's 2 responsibility. So, I am glad that we are able to attach this to Departments and to individuals in Departments. I think that that is a very good move and step forward. I will go straight into questions. What specific changes have been made to the draft action plans as a result of the responses that were received during the last consultation? Mr Lavery: There has been quite a lot of refinement and sharpening up. To some extent, I think that the earlier versions might have reflected the fact that they were almost like a prefabricated structure built in different places by different groups. We have done a lot of work to try to synthesise them and make them more consistent. You will now see, for example, the problem-solving watermark, if you like, running through all of them. So, we have tried to make them at least resemble a single voice, if you like, or the product of a single voice. The responses varied considerably, and we were encouraged by both the extent and the quality of the responses we received. We are trying here to strike a balance between people who want to have something very specific, in which they invest a particular importance, up in lights in the programme and those who want something that, at this stage, has to be necessarily pitched at a higher level. What is different is maybe less what is on the page but what has been happening below the surface. We have set up groups to look at some of the pathfinder problem-solving justice projects. Colleagues, including Steven in safer communities and Ronnie Armour, the chair of the Courts Service, are working on the development of the substance misuse court and are talking to the relevant agencies that can support us with that. I know that there is to be a meeting shortly, if not next week, to start to focus in on what the evidence suggests would be the appropriate location for that. It is a work in progress. I am not sure that it would look exactly like this, even if we came back in six months' time. As you might expect, other things may emerge from the next eight weeks of consultation. We thought that it was important to go around with the delivery plans and try to engage with people on the ground, and we decided to use the policing and community safety partnerships as the mechanisms. We have asked them to arrange meetings for us in a number of areas, where we will ask them to tell us what is relevant to their communities and what those aspirational priorities would mean for them in their locations.
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