Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): I welcome Hugh Widdis, the permanent secretary of the Department of Justice. Thank you very much for your attendance. I invite you to make an opening statement.

Mr Hugh Widdis (Department of Justice): Thank you very much, Chair and Committee, for the opportunity to meet you today. I know that officials have been attending the Committee regularly, and I hope that you have been finding that helpful. Chair, you are very welcome to the Committee — not that that is for me to say. As the Minister has said many times, we very much value the Committee's input. You will know that I have been here before and that departmental officials come here all the time. I am very happy for us to help the Committee any time that we can. We are, fairly obviously, trying to advance the Minister's priorities, but the Committee has a critical challenge and support role in that.

I know that there is a lot that you want to discuss. I am here to talk about whatever you wish, but I know that there has been a particular focus on the Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland (CJINI) report 'Transforming the Criminal Justice System in Northern Ireland'. We have given you an update on progress, and I hope that that has been helpful. I am thankful to the Committee for giving us extra time; that was to allow us to progress things sufficiently to keep you informed about what is going on. I am very happy to discuss as much of that as I can today.

I know that the Committee is very keen, as are we, on the vision of a shared future and the strategic priorities to deliver transformation and innovation across the criminal justice system, as recommended in the report. That is not without its challenges; everybody will understand the complexity of the criminal justice system. It spans, for example, two Departments, so there is not just us but the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) and two different accounting officers. Therefore, even in those Departments, we are talking about operational independence, including the PSNI, the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service (NICTS) and, of course, independent judges, who are very much a part of the system. The Lady Chief Justice (LCJ) is, of course, a member of the Criminal Justice Board (CJB) and she is, as we all are, quite rightly very protective of the independence of the judiciary.

Each part of the system has critical but very different roles, many of which require the essential independence that society and the system expect and need. The outworking of that, however, is the fact that transformational change can be made complicated, so making sure that we are all moving in the same direction while respecting that independence can be difficult, but we are committed to doing so. The Minister and the Criminal Justice Board are strongly committed to having a shared vision for the justice system in order to inform that collective purpose. There is also a consensus that such a vision should be developed collaboratively. All those independence reasons mean that it cannot be a Department of Justice vision or a Minister of Justice vision that is imposed on the system; it must be a system-wide vision that provides a point of direction that everybody can agree to move towards.

We did initial work to develop a vision inside the Department, which was discussed with the Criminal Justice Board in spring this year. We developed an engagement plan and agreed it with the Criminal Justice Board. At the meeting in September, the Criminal Justice Board asked for the engagement to be expanded to include some more focused discussions with board members. It was agreed at the outset that it would be beneficial to engage some external input as part of that engagement. Again, that was to avoid the sensation that the Department was imposing its vision in some way on all the participants and to develop a vision in a truly collaborative and co-designed way. For example, we have engaged with the chief inspector herself, the Chief Constable, the Lady Chief Justice, other members of the judiciary, the Law Society, the Bar, the PPS, the Probation Board for Northern Ireland (PBNI), the Courts and Tribunals Service and the director general of the Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS). Perhaps most importantly, we have engaged with the Commissioner Designate for Victims of Crime, as well as victims' groups.

We are, therefore, now in a position to have a draft vision, which we will bring to the Criminal Justice Board at its meeting in December. We will then look at arrangements for wider public engagement, which is a fundamental step in the process to get it right. We are very keen as well that, as a key and critical stakeholder in the criminal justice system, the Committee will have time to consider the draft vision. We will very much value the Committee's view as part of ensuring that we have a shared vision for the system as a whole. It is really interesting to note that some of the discussions with the stakeholders touched on not just the system but the role of the Criminal Justice Board in driving the vision forward. We are very keen to look at that as well as we agree the vision.
As well as what we are planning to do for the future, it is probably worth noting the range of transformation that is already happening across the justice system. The chief inspector recognised that in her report. Very substantial change has been going on. Members will be aware of the speeding up justice programme in particular, which the Criminal Justice Board is supervising. That will be fundamental not only to getting a better experience for victims and witnesses but for increased efficiency and public confidence in stakeholders. Again, that programme is being developed with all our partners, so even in the absence of a single unified vision, that work has been done. A number of years ago, the Criminal Justice Board made speeding up justice a priority across the system as a whole. We have public-sector transformation funding going into that, and I am very happy to discuss it if members are interested in the details. We have public-sector transformation funding going into electronic monitoring, which, again, is showing transformation across the Department and the system as a whole. We have put further bids into the second tranche of the public-sector transformation fund as well, and I am very happy to discuss those with members if they wish. The Department is actively engaged with the transformation board and the secretariat to the board to assist its consideration, and we are waiting on a decision from the board on the latest bids that we have put in.

I am really grateful that, based on the Minister's recommendation, the Executive agreed in June that we can continue with the recovery plan of getting £7 million by way of a first call for policing pay. That is incredibly supportive for one of the transformation strands in policing, which is the recovery programme and of which the Finance Minister has been very supportive. The Justice Minister and the Chief Constable are also committed to that.

I had a few other comments, but I am happy to leave them there, Chair, in the interest of time in order to allow you and the members to get started. Those points can be picked up.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): OK. Thanks very much, Hugh. I will open it up to members.

Mr Kingston: Thank you, Hugh, for your attendance. The 'Transforming the Criminal Justice System in Northern Ireland' report from CJINI was, helpfully, brief in the number of recommendations that it made; there was just one strategic recommendation and two operational. I was surprised by something in the briefing paper that gave us an update on that. My reading of it is that, of the two operational recommendations, no actions are resulting. We are told:

On the second operational recommendation, it says that DOJ?and all justice organisations:

of the various programmes to "reduce duplication and free capacity."

We were told in the update that DOJ asked:

Mr Widdis: Yes.

Mr Kingston: Obviously, this is a transformation report, and I am concerned that it seems that the bodies have looked at themselves and reported that no concerns have been identified. Is that a fair reading of it? Have any of the organisations come up with any proposals to reduce duplication, make savings or speed up justice, or will that be covered by the strategic recommendation, which is under way and has been extended?

Mr Widdis: That is really helpful; thank you so much. There is the strategic level, which will, in a series of steps, agree the vision first and then use that to decide what kind of governance is needed and the future work plan to deliver that vision. I am happy to talk about that, but yes, I anticipate that it might result in some shifts of governance. For example, one of the comments in the process was about the composition of the Criminal Justice Board and whether we might want to revise that and, logically, the boards that flow to it.

Of the two operational recommendations, the first is very much about the PSNI, and in order to assist the Committee and the Criminal Justice Inspection, we, as the Department, will make sure that we pass those recommendations on to the PSNI and that they flow back through etc. The PSNI has looked internally at its governance, which, to be fair, has probably changed since some of the fieldwork on the inspection's report was done. The inspection is quite content that no further action is needed inside the PSNI — that operational recommendation is very much about it — to further streamline or reduce duplication.

I assume that that means — in fact, I know that it means — that it has looked at the groups that it has and decided that it does not need to change any of them. For example, one of the groups that is not exclusively in the PSNI but is with the PSNI and PPS and that works well is the Working Together Board. You might find that there are a number of projects in the Working Together Board and that some of the senior people in the two organisations are involved in delivering each of those projects, so they might also be involved. However, the PSNI looked at that work and is content that there is no unnecessary or harmful duplication in it.

The second operational recommendation is not wholly dissimilar but is wider and goes across all organisations. We have asked everybody to look at it and to come back to us, and nobody has come back to us yet and told us that they have significant concerns. Again, the passage of time since the fieldwork was done may have resulted in some of those groups having already been streamlined to a certain extent. However, we are not getting anything back from the system as a whole saying that the organisations are finding significant levels of unnecessary membership of more than one group at once. That is probably partly due to the fact that it is a really complicated system. If we are running multiple projects and programmes across the system to try to improve it, given the fact that we are talking about a small number of people in Northern Ireland in comparison with the UK as a whole, it is to be expected to some degree that you might, for example, get an assistant chief constable (ACC) on two or three project boards to drive things forward and then reporting back up to the Deputy Chief Constable or through the Chief Constable to the Criminal Justice Board. Across the UK as a whole, you might get an ACC from one police force on one strand for the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) or whatever and another from a completely different police force on another strand of transformation.

Mr Kingston: I am left bewildered. Did the groups talk to each other? The purpose was to reduce duplication and release capacity. Did they just look at things internally? It puts more of an onus now on the Department and the Minister to find the means to make transformation to reduce duplication and release capacity. It seems that the various organisations have not come up with any actual proposals that would make any difference, given that the report is meant to be about transformation. The police seem to be saying, "We're getting on with that work ourselves anyway". That is a disappointing outcome so far from the CJINI report. It puts more of an onus on the Department to get organisations to take a strategic overview of who is doing what, where savings can be made and where operations can be streamlined if there is duplication, as well as to release capacity, which is what we were told the process was meant to do.

Mr Widdis: I very much hope that the strategic recommendation, as well as the system as a whole inside the PSNI, will lead us in that direction. Again, we are not directly responsible for the PSNI's accountability to us — that is for the Policing Board — but, broadly speaking, the PSNI's internal structure on transformation revolves around its strategic transformation board. It has a programme of activity. From recollection, it has 20 or 30 projects. I anticipate that the scale of a transformation programme similar to that inside an organisation such as the PSNI probably relies on a limited number of people who are involved in multiple different parts of it. The PSNI has looked at that and assured us that it is content that there is no unnecessary duplication.

The other recommendation feels a bit like the first, but, system-wide, nobody has yet told us that they are seeing any duplication. However, we are happy to refresh that and come back to the Committee if we find something or even to report generally on why people have not found that and reassure the Committee that we are not unnecessarily putting too much of an onus on people.

My understanding of the report is that it is not really about duplication in the sense of wasted work because two different groups are working on the same thing. It is more about the small number of people who are involved in driving those changes having to be part of multiple governance strands and reporting back up. However, I am happy to come back to the Committee with a bit more reassurance on that if that would help the member.

Mr Kingston: We will hear in due course.

Ms Egan: Thank you, Hugh, for coming in today. I want to talk about transformation and the pressures that are in the Department, especially financial pressures. I know that all Departments have cited financial pressures this year, but — you can correct me if I am wrong on this — there is a particular squeeze on DOJ in that 0·5% of its budget is discretionary. Will you talk about how those pressures are impacting your Department's ability to deliver transformation?

Mr Widdis: No problem. Thank you. The Department's resource budget as a whole after June monitoring was about £1·4 billion. We run the justice system as a whole out of that budget. Policing, as you are probably aware, takes up about two thirds of it. That sounds like a very large number, but more than two thirds of it is taken up with the staff costs. By and large, the rest is taken up with statutory commitments, which are the things that we in the Department or our partners must do. That is because the laws of the Assembly, laws that Parliament passes or existing contractual commitments require that those things happen, so it makes it incredibly difficult. One of our calculations is that about £6·2 million is not essential pre-committed spend, which gives us that discretionary figure that is less than half a percent of the total budget. Therefore, that makes it really tight and really difficult to do transformation. That is all on the resource money side.

Given that capital is typically an investment in the future and in doing things in a better way — it is very often for physical things, such as buildings and computer and IT infrastructure and so on — we invest all that money regularly in order to do that. However, even that £100 million is quite tight. The Committee has seen our five-year departmental plan, so it has seen the possible need for more capital investment in the Department of Justice over the next few years. Any support that the Committee can give in getting that will be gratefully received. In order to try to supplement that, however, we have put a bid in. For example, we put in a bid to the Department of Finance every time that there is a forthcoming round, and we can speak very positively about being able to deliver our transformation projects on budget and on time, as we have in the past. For example, we have put in a bid to the public-sector transformation fund, and, as I said, we were comparatively successful in the last round. We secured £20 million and a few million of capital for the speeding up justice programme, which is central to transforming the criminal justice system. We also secured £2·5 million for the electronic monitoring project to allow us to enhance and modernise what we are doing on electronic monitoring. That sounds like a relatively small amount of money, but, when you think about our having a £6 million discretionary spend in the Department, you find that £2·5 million over a number of years is of great assistance in driving things such as a GPS facility and tagging, as opposed to our having just a local radio thing and the tagging, so we keep pushing what we can on those things.

Ms Egan: Thank you. Those projects will be really positive. It is great that you secured that funding for them. Will you talk a bit more about the context that you are working in and the transformation that has taken place to date since policing and justice was devolved to the Assembly?

Mr Widdis: As members will know, I am still quite new. I am a year in, but I am still quite new to the Department. However, one of the things with which I was incredibly impressed was the quiet history of change and transformation that the justice system as a whole, the criminal justice system in particular and the Department have delivered over the past 15 years since policing and justice was devolved. Although that may not always have been tagged as transformation or transformative activity — I absolutely accept the critique in the inspection's report that not everything that might be badged as transformation is actually transformative — I ask you to think about the prison system and where it was in 2011 before the fundamental review and where it is now. Just yesterday, the permanent secretary of the Department of Education, who was previously the director general of the Prison Service, reminded me that Maghaberry was reported on very negatively not that long ago — it was a decade ago — but our prisons are now amongst the best in the United Kingdom in independent inspections. You are probably aware that Hydebank Wood Secure College has been scored four out of four on each of the standards of prison inspection. Magilligan was recently inspected, and I am confident that that will go very positively as well. The prison system has been transformed towards the rehabilitation of prisoners, and cost per place has also been driven out across that period.

Youth justice has completely transformed, so again, there was a fundamental review of youth justice and the way that we do things into having a child-first approach. We have gone from having 40 or so children and young people in custody at any given moment down to there being in the region of 10, according to the last figures that I saw. That has been done deliberately through a transformation of the way that criminal justice is carried out in relation to children and diverting them out of the criminal justice system and taking that child-first approach. There are similar instances of that across the justice system as a whole. I absolutely agree with the inspector about how we can enhance that, build on it and go further by taking a system approach and accepting that people who are different participants in the system quite rightly have their independence protected. Judges are independent constitutional actors and are not subject in any way to the Department's control. However, that does not mean that the system cannot be enhanced by having agreement around a single vision, and I am quite confident that all the work that has been done shows that people can collaborate and that organisations are willing to cohere — Criminal Justice Board members have displayed a willingness to do that — around a single future agreed position on what the criminal justice system might be like and that there is help for all those organisations, or parts of the system, to steer towards that. The history of the transformation that has been delivered in the justice system can only give us confidence about being able to deliver that in the future. It will not be easy. It is never easy to corral any system into a single direction, and it is never easy, as you say, to do transformation without necessary injections of funding, but we are doing everything that we can, and the Minister is doing everything that she can, with criminal justice leader partners to make sure that we can deliver it.

Miss Hargey: Thank you very much, Hugh. You said that the draft vision will be ready in December. Will it be with the Committee in December, or is that just for board approval?

Mr Widdis: We hope to take it to the Criminal Justice Board, and that is to happen in early December. If my memory is correct, it will happen on 12 December, given that December is a short month for holiday reasons. As long as the board is content with where it is and with its core concepts, we would be very happy to bring it to the Committee as soon as we can after that.

Miss Hargey: Will it be with us at the last Committee meeting in December, or maybe early January?

Mr Widdis: That is subject to the board agreeing with us on it. The board, of course, includes the Lady Chief Justice and the Chief Constable, so it is not just the Department and the Minister. However, I am very happy to aim for that and to bring it back to the board and ask whether we can do it.

Miss Hargey: You spoke about going beyond the board when looking at the vision and going to other stakeholders. Do you have a sense of who those were and whether victims and survivors were involved? One of the big aspects of delay is the impact that it has on them. When Gillen looked at the whole issue, he wanted to build in the voices of victims and survivors, so I was wondering whether they were involved as part of that vision and work.

Mr Widdis: Absolutely. They have been involved to date, and the commissioner designate, for example, was one of the first people to whom we spoke. You are probably aware that the commissioner designate now attends the Criminal Justice Board, which is an early iteration of how we might evolve the current composition of the board in order to make it more effective. As we get through the vision, I hope that some of that will be thought about.

We have engaged with victims' groups on that as well. The place of victims is central to the emerging thinking about the vision and what we will bring to the board. There is an emerging theme around supporting and listening to victims and citizens, because the whole system is there, in many ways, to vindicate the rights of victims and to protect citizens in society as a whole. There is also thinking about making sure that we do justice at pace and efficiently and about minimising and deterring offending and reoffending.

Those are the core concepts that have come out of the collaborative co-design work and that everybody feels are the right things that the system should be heading towards. We simply need to bring that together to the board and make sure that it is content. Therefore, we need to drive it inside its organisation, and that will very much include making sure that victims are core to the ultimate vision as well.

Miss Hargey: Just following on from Brian's point, I am concerned about some of the recommendations from the Criminal Justice Inspection. When you read through the different reports, you see that it talks about transformation programmes being fragmented in all those different organisations that are in the wider Department. It also highlighted weaknesses in cooperation and the accountability pathways. As you say, there are different strands of accountability, such as through the Policing Board and this Committee. Therefore, if there is no clear vision, it is a bit disjointed on transformation and there are no clear pathways for vision and accountability, it is a bit all over the place at times. Even if you are trying to get synergy, the vision is one thing, but what that looks like further down the chain from the vision and where the accountability in it is another. How do you go about rectifying that, or what have you identified as the key areas so that you can deal with some of the complaints or criticisms that the inspectorate highlighted?

Mr Widdis: That is really helpful. Thank you. The chief inspector rightly picked up on cases in which individual organisations have progressed a change project without fully thinking through the implications for the system as a whole. I totally accept that. That is symptomatic of any big, complicated system for something that happens in government. The long march towards better collaboration and cohesion across government involves making sure that we all know what one another is doing. The Programme for Government (PFG) itself contains a coordinated programme of activity that draws together multiple outcomes to try to push everybody in the same direction.

All those things are indicative of exactly what we are trying to do. One way of preventing different projects from happening in isolation is for everybody to agree where we want to be with the criminal justice system. If everybody, including those who are independent and do not have to agree but choose to do so, agrees on that, everybody will be drawn towards it. For example, we anticipate that one thing to come out of the vision will be an agreed work plan for the system as a whole. If somebody wants to develop a digital innovation in their area, for example, it will not be done unless it is part of the work plan that drives towards the vision. There therefore should be no unanticipated impacts on other parts of the system or on other organisations. There should be a decrease in individual bits of a system doing their own thing and not thinking collectively about their impact on others.

Miss Hargey: The vision will be one thing, but what will come after it is the important bit, because, as you say, good work is being done in each of the agencies on certain aspects, but that is not matched across the board, and, as a result, because a whole-system approach is not being taken, there are gaps and inconsistencies that lead to delays in the system. There may be good progress made in one area but huge gaps in another. When the Committee gets the vision document, I will be keen to know what will underpin it. What will be prioritised? What will the work plan be? Can you give us a sense of when we will have that document? That is important, given the point that Connie raised, which is that the budget situation will not hugely improve, even with the Chancellor's announcement next week, albeit the Executive will hopefully move to a three-year Budget cycles. That should lead the Department to consider what it is going to prioritise and how the agencies in the broader justice family can work on that prioritisation and shared vision. I will be keen to get an update on that when you have the document.

The length of time that sexual offences cases in particular take is an example of an area of concern. Adjournments are a big issue, with the victim not being told in court that the case has been adjourned until much later in the day. In some cases in which I have been involved, those who are up on the charges are almost away home before the victim, who is still sitting in the courthouse, is told. It is therefore about the impact of that on the victim and survivor. We know about the huge delays. We know that there has been an increase in delays in Crown Court cases, which are some of the most serious cases. We are therefore keen to see which areas the Department and the broader justice family will prioritise over the next period, taking into account the fact that we have to work within a constrained budget. Once we get the vision document, I am keen to hear more about what underpins the vision and what accountability mechanisms there will be.

Mr Widdis: I am happy to do that. I completely agree that we could agree a vision, put it up and print some nice flyers, and it would then be forgotten about. It is about embedding it in people's thinking, embedding it in people's strategic planning in their organisations and embedding it in the culture across all the operators inside the criminal justice system. All must be part of it.

Once we have it agreed as a core direction, the plan is to get feedback from across the whole system, including from the Committee, on whether it is the right vision. We then might need to tweak it a bit more. Part of that has to be about clarifying ownership of it and the governance around it. That all sounds very dry and tedious, but it is about making sure, for example, that the Criminal Justice Board, or the Minister or whomever it is going to be, accepts ownership and is seized of it. I anticipate, however, that it will be the Criminal Justice Board. Critically, as you mentioned, a specific work plan has to come out of that. Again, as with any strategy, one sets a future state target and draws up a very detailed work plan or road map for how to get there. Its first few years will be clearer and more precise, while, for further down the line, it may be less fleshed out. I can assure you, however, that as long as the board agrees with us, we will be developing a work plan and bringing it to you.

As an example of that, the Criminal Justice Board's current priority focus is on speeding up justice. That is not a vision for the criminal justice system as a whole, but it is very specifically a priority to deal with one of the known key problems in the system, which is avoidable delay. We now have a very detailed work plan for the speeding up justice programme. As you are probably aware, there are five big projects in that programme, each of which is broken down into sub-strands of activity. We have enhanced the programme's governance quite recently, having received the transformation funding in part.

We have a very detailed work plan and timeline for when everything is going to happen, including for the interdependencies of, for example, direct committal, early engagement fees, digital reform and the remit of the Magistrates' Court. There is therefore a worked-out sequence on a Gantt chart of how all of that will happen. Similarly, I anticipate that, once we get the vision agreed for the system as a whole, not just for the speeding up justice element, there will be something equivalent that will be agreed by the CJB and therefore applied across the organisations as a whole in order to coordinate activity and show the results and outcomes for the system and the citizen. Once that is all developed, I will be very happy to bring it to the Committee to discuss or explain it as the Committee wants.

Miss Hargey: Thank you.

Mr Widdis: I hope that that is reassuring.

Mr Beattie: Thanks very much, Hugh. I understand that a lot of this is very complex, because certain arms of the system have independence. I absolutely get that. I want to cover a number of themes. I will begin by following on from what Deirdre said about victims' information. At the moment, we have the prisoner release victim information scheme (PRVIS), the victims unit, victim information schemes and the PSNI and PPS's victim and witness care unit. Surely it makes more sense to combine all those into one victim information scheme, which covers all of that, rather than having to go through all those different schemes and units. We need to remember, of course, that we have an opt-in system, as opposed to an opt-out system. I still do not quite understand the rationale behind that. If someone has been the victim of a very serious crime, even up to and including murder, the last thing that people are thinking about is whether they want to opt into a scheme. They will want to do so at a later stage, however. Is there therefore anything that we can do to rationalise all those information schemes? I will be honest — I will come on to this in a minute — and say that they are not working. They are failing victims quite badly.

Mr Widdis: That is really helpful, Mr Beattie. Thank you very much. Once a vision is agreed, it is hard to conceive that it will not include a future state in which what we do for victims, witnesses and citizens is even better. On the assumption that the vision will be there — we will certainly be encouraging the Criminal Justice Board to do it — in order to enhance what we are doing, we will get an agreed set of details about the work plan that I spoke about to Miss Hargey. Part of that may well be that the way in which we do victims' services at the moment will be reviewed and that proposals for how that will be done will be included in the work plan and so on.

I find it hard to agree completely that the victim information system is failing. I know that there are cases in which, for example, the PRVIS has not managed to get the right information out to people, but that does not mean that the system is failing. Rather, it means that there are individual instances in which things have not happened as we would like them to. I appreciate completely that that causes unreasonable distress for victims, but I do not think that it means that the system is failing. If, however, we agree a vision in which we say that we are going to change the system as a whole and that we will make things better for victims, I will encourage the Criminal Justice Board and all the criminal justice bodies to think about how we can do that.

Mr Beattie: I am sorry, Hugh. When I say that the system is failing, I mean that it is failing because of a lack of cohesion. The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. Let me give you a clear example of that, which I have raised many times. The family of Jim McFadden, who was murdered by James Meehan, were informed by the Parole Commissioners for Northern Ireland that James Meehan would not be allowed out of jail.

Who informed the Parole Commissioners? It was the Probation Board for Northern Ireland. Two months later, however, Meehan was let out on day release on his own. By whom? By the Prison Service. How can we then say that the system works when the Parole Commissioners say, "We're not going to let this man out" and the Probation Board's care unit says, "He is not getting out", only for the Prison Service to let him out the gates. That is what I mean when I talk about cohesion. To double down on that, James Meehan, having absconded from prison for a year, is up for his third extradition hearing to be returned to prison, but nobody has attended those hearings in order to inform the family. I am getting questions from the family, who are asking, "I hear that there was an extradition hearing for James Meehan. Nobody's come to tell us what's happening. Can you help us out?". I am therefore having to do that. Do you know from where they are getting the information? Open source. They are not getting information from any of the bodies that I just listed. They are getting if from open source. In other words, a journalist is telling them. That is not good enough.

Mr Widdis: I appreciate that absence of information for victims' families can be incredibly distressing. I do not want to get into an individual case. You mentioned pre-release testing, for example. Pre-release testing is there for a purpose. It is there to ensure rehabilitation and that the system as a whole drives offending out of the system by helping reduce reoffending once people are in our care.

I totally accept that we can always get better and that we will always learn from things that have not worked very successfully. On victims and the victim information system, if there are improvements to be made — for example, your proposal to cohere everything together into one big system across all the individual agencies involved — I am happy to say that the criminal justice vision work will lead to something that does that. It is OK for me to say that I think that that should happen. We will, however, have to make sure of that with the Criminal Justice Board, which includes the prosecutor who has the victim support system. It will also include the commissioner designate, who is an observer on the board, and it will include things that the judiciary and the Prison Service do as well.

Mr Beattie: I guess that that is a fair point. I mentioned the McFadden family because they gave me permission to mention the case. I have raised that case on an awful lot of occasions, and the Committee will know that. You raise the issue of pre-release testing, and there is an argument that we are not adhering to the legislation on pre-release testing. Who sets the criteria for pre-release testing? Where is it set down in law that we can start pre-release testing three years before a life tariff comes to an end?

Mr Widdis: Pre-release testing is done under the responsibility of the Prison Service to prepare people for release. Moreover, the Parole Commissioners need to be given information so that they can take a decision on whether people are fit for release. That is the overarching framework for why and how we do pre-release testing. Pre-release testing is done in a graduated way. It is all part of the prisoner development model. People will work with the person in our care to help them get ready for release.

Mr Beattie: I am sorry to speak over you. I know all that you have just told me. That is not the question that I asked. The question that I asked was this: who set the criteria meaning that it can start three years out? The Life Sentences (Northern Ireland) Order 2001 states that an individual should complete the specified sentence:

If somebody is given a 10-year life sentence, for example, he has to serve 10 years before being considered for release. He should therefore serve that time before he goes out the gates. That is the retribution part of the sentence. Who made the decision to allow the Prison Service to start pre-release testing three years before that tariff has ended? If we look at the example of the Cawdery family, McEntee was allowed out 30 months before his tariff was up. He was allowed out on his own 30 months early, and the family were not told, so there is the fundamental problem that we have.

Mr Widdis: Again, I do not want to get into discussing individual cases. I am quite happy that the process that is gone through for pre-release testing is entirely consistent with the law. I am happy to come back to you about the three-year figure. I do not immediately know off the top of my head which regulation or whatever puts that in place, but I am happy to come back and explain that to the Committee. I can, however, assure you that, the entire process of detaining prisoners once a court has sent them to us means that the Prison Service is required to make sure that the sentence is properly served. When the Parole Commissioners' then take decisions, the Prison Service is required to make sure that people are adequately released and that they are also prepared for that release in order to ensure that we reduce the chance of their returning to offending. As to where the three-year rule comes from, I am happy to come back to the member.

Mr Beattie: I do not think it is the three-year rule. Rather, I think that it is what the Prison Service has decided to do. You explained it, but we all know the different phases before a prisoner is allowed out on their own. The point that I am making is that prisoners are getting out on their own before their tariff is up. They are back on the streets before their tariff is up. The judge sets a tariff, and it is quite clear in legislation that the tariff is the retribution element. How can it be retribution when the guy is out the gates and wandering about the streets?

It is therefore a fundamental issue, Hugh. When I say that the system is not functioning, what I am talking about is the cohesion of the system. One side does not know what the other is doing, and that is my point. When the Parole Commissioners write to a victim's family to say that the guy is not getting out, only for the Prison Service to let him out on day release two months later, that does not sound cohesive to me, and that is my concern.

That leads me on to the Criminal Justice Board, which has never had a shared vision and has never had strategic priorities. The Probation Board does not sit on it, nor does the chief commissioner of the Parole Commissioners for Northern Ireland, so how do we get that cohesion? Given the issues that I have raised, if the very people who are responsible for informing victims — I look at victims more than I look at perpetrators — are not represented on the CJB, how are we supposed to get to a place where we can look at those issues?

Mr Widdis: Through the exact process that we are engaged in, I suppose, is my answer to that. You said that the Parole Commissioners are not on the Criminal Justice Board. You will know that the existing membership is the Lady Chief Justice, the prosecutor, the Chief Constable and the Department. The commissioner designate joins as an observer. There is entirely an argument to be made that, as we cohere into a particular vision, the board's composition may need to change, its governance may need to change, the bodies that report to it may need to change and the level of authority that the board has may need to change. We are very happy to explore all of that with the CJB and the different participants, and then with the Committee.

On the specifics of whether Parole Commissioners, the Probation Board or whatever should be on the board, I think that that will flow from what is in the vision document. As for the need to get cohesion, I am totally with you. The way in which to get cohesion in a system is to agree on where the system is going and on what it is ultimately trying to achieve. If there is no coherent vision in, for example, the health service for the health of the community to be free at the point of use or whatever, the service will never get there. The criminal justice system is similar. Even with the best will in the world, in well-meaning organisations, which we all are, people will not quite know in which direction to head or whether what they are planning entirely aligns with what the Probation Board will do next year or what the Parole Commissioners will do next year. I therefore totally agree with you on that. That is why we are undertaking this exercise, and it is why it is so critical that we get right what the chief inspector has recommended. If that flows down into changes to how we deal with victims and to how we keep them informed of what is going on, I totally agree that it would be need to be done in advance, but we need to get the core vision agreed and settled first.

Mr Beattie: You are right, Hugh. We need to do it right, but we need to do it at pace, because, as long as it is not being done right, victims will suffer. When there is not cohesion, and I do not think that there is, victims will suffer. I say that not because I believe that those involved are not good people, because they are good people. Rather, I say it because they are all pulling in slightly different directions.

If I were to ask members around the table what they think the priority is in Northern Ireland, we would all say that it is ending violence against women and girls (EVAWG). We would all say that we should be cohesive in order to end violence against women and girls. The PPS, however, decides to send hundreds of non-fatal strangulation cases to the Magistrates' Court yet only 15 to the Crown Court. Non-fatal strangulation mostly occurs against females. That the PPS does that is not really sending the message that we are strong on ending violence against women and girls. I know that the PPS is independent, but the courts hand down some of the most pitiful sentences that I have ever seen. We can argue pedantically, but the people out there will not have confidence in our justice system as a result. They will see what is happening and say, "Everybody is saying that ending violence against women and girls is a priority, but the PPS thinks that it is not, because it is sending perpetrators to the Magistrates' Court, not to the Crown Court". The maximum sentence at the Crown Court is, I think, 12 years, but it goes down to two years in the Magistrates' Court. People therefore assume that we are not really serious about tackling that particular problem. Do you see where I am coming from, Hugh?

Mr Widdis: I do, absolutely. As the member very kindly pointed out, I am not the PPS and am therefore not responsible for it. I will say, however, from my engagement with it and from talking to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), that the PPS is absolutely committed to the eradication of violence against women and girls. In the same way, every part of government is, and the Executive Office strategy is really critical to achieving that. The fact that a certain proportion of cases may be prosecuted in the Magistrates' Court and a certain proportion in the Crown Court, for any particular offence, is always going to result in the individual decisions that the prosecutor or the PSNI takes in each case. A lot of them are facts-specific. I absolutely take your point, however.

The member said that the Criminal Justice Board does not have priorities, but, at the moment, it has one key priority, on which it wants everybody to focus, and that is speeding up justice. Although it is not targeted at EVAWG, the speeding up justice programme will deliver benefits in all sorts of ways for cases, including sexual offences cases, violence against women cases and domestic and sexual abuse cases. Every day of unavoidable delay that we can collectively drive out of the criminal justice system means a better day for victims and witnesses. In the past couple of years, although the Crown Court is still sticky, we have got the median time for all cases down from 225 days to 189 days. That is the figure that is in my head from the most recent report . We are therefore getting there. We are showing progress, and the speeding up justice programme is intended to make more progress.

Mr Beattie: I am just hoping, Hugh, that the speeding up justice programme is not why we are pushing to the Magistrates' Court cases that should be going to the Crown Court, particularly cases of non-fatal strangulation, which is a crime against women and girls predominantly. There is such a case up soon of a man on a man. It will be interesting to see whether that case goes to the Crown Court or the Magistrates' Court. I absolutely get what you are saying, but there is still a concern that people think that speeding up justice means, "Let's push cases through the courts by the quickest route possible", as doing so does not necessarily always meet the deterrent part of sentencing.

With your indulgence, Chair, may I ask one more question, please? It is to better my understanding. The Home Office is responsible for the deportation of foreign offenders if they receive a sentence of over one year. If a foreign national receives a sentence of over one year, the Home Office is therefore responsible for that individual's deportation. Recently, an individual was up in court for withholding information in a murder case and got two years, but, because of time served, the judge released him at court, and there was nobody there to deport him. He just melted back into society and then probably across the border into the Irish Republic. Who is responsible for making sure that all the relevant people attend court in such cases? Do we know? In other words, what is the trigger point?

Mr Widdis: I am not sure that I can answer all of that, but I will respond briefly. I will go back to reassuring everybody. If there is any thought that the speeding up justice agenda, which is a very positive, cross-system agenda to eradicate delay, is affecting prosecutorial decisions, I imagine that the DPP will say that it is not, in the sense of individual decisions that are taken. The prosecutor has the prosecutorial task of deciding whether someone is to be prosecuted, and that is enshrined in law as the way in which we prosecute people and the reason that we prosecute them. Expedition, or getting things done quickly, is not part of the test. You know that we are consulting on out-of-court disposals and that we will be coming with proposals about extending the remit of the Magistrates' Court to let it take certain cases that are currently in the Crown Court. Essentially, the least critical cases in the Crown Court might move to the Magistrates' Court. There are initiatives such as that, but those are all legal or administrative changes that have been well thought out and will come in front of other changes. Again, none of those changes would affect the prosecutorial decision about whether someone is to be prosecuted. I want to reassure members about that.

Deportation is very much a Home Office function. The nub of your question is this: if there is a possibility that somebody may be released after time served, who is responsible for ensuring that Border Force colleagues are there and ready to detain the person? I do not immediately know the answer to that, but I am happy to come back to you on it.

Mr Beattie: Yes, it is about the trigger point.

Mr Widdis: I take the point. There will be cases in which people who have been in custody are released, after which Border Force can take them immediately. There will be others in which it is not immediately known that people are about to get out, and that is because of uncertainty over what the judge is about to decide. I do not quite know the answer to that, but I am happy to come back to you on it.

Mr Beattie: That is fair enough, but, at the other end, there was a victim who watched that happen.

I am sorry, Chair, but I have a very quick question. Hugh, when you leave here, will you please have a look at domestic homicide reviews? If the family waives their right for the victim to be named, let us not give the perpetrator a pseudonym. Let us change the law. We cannot have the victim in a homicide being named while the guy who is doing 20 years in prison for murder is given a false name. Can you look at whether we can change that?

Mr Widdis: I am very happy to take that away, Chair.

Mr McGlone: Hugh, it is good to see you. I come at this from the perspective of victims. Delay has been mentioned multiple times today. There are some high-profile cases that we cannot get into because they are before the courts, but I know some of the victims very well, and, for them, it is about the delay. It would be helpful for you to give us some of the Department's insight. I will take the three tiers in turn: the police, the PPS and the courts. Some cases may be slightly different from others, but has the Department any insight into, or has it done any work on, why there is such delay in cases moving from the police to the PPS? Cases then seem to spend an inordinate amount of time in the Crown Court in particular?

Mr Widdis: No problem, Mr McGlone. I am totally with you, as is the Minister, on victims being at the core of the process and on making sure that they are looked after as well as possible. The length of time that it takes to dispose of cases has increased slowly. There are all sorts of reasons for that, including the increased complexity of evidence. We are living in a digital world that we were not in 20 years ago, so, for example, we often find that the police have vast amounts of data to analyse on even a relatively ordinary phone. There are therefore all sorts of reasons that cases become more complex.

You mentioned the interface between the PSNI, the PPS and the courts. It is recognised that how the PSNI passes a file on to the PPS for its decision can be improved. For example, the quality of information in the file can always be improved. We have a project for that. We are trying to introduce something called a standard build that shows exactly what should be in each file. Work is being done on a no-file decisions pilot. The Public Prosecution Service would not get involved in such decisions, which would be taken on the policing side. That would save the PPS time. We also have what we call early engagement, which is about the PPS, the PSNI, defence practitioners and the perpetrator being involved in earlier discussions to see what we can bring back from that. We totally accept that, even in that early PSNI to PPS interface, systems and ways of working can be improved. The organisations also accept that.

That acceptance is encapsulated in the speeding up justice programme. The Criminal Justice Board said, "Our key priority for the moment is speeding up justice, so we are going to focus on that", and that led to analysis by the Department, albeit it was of information that everybody gave us — everybody was happy to give it to us and to collaborate with us — to identify the four or five hotspots where delay is most likely. Largely but not exclusively, those are at the interfaces as cases move through the system.

Beyond that, work to improve things is going on inside the organisations. The PPS's strategic vision document, 'PPS 2030', is designed to make it faster and better at taking decisions. We do not normally fund the PPS, but, through a bid for transformation funding, we have been able to get some money to it to take on extra prosecutors to grind through backlogs and to work with the police on things such as case-file builds and no-file decisions. The speeding up justice programme — I think that we have briefed the Committee on it, but if not, I am happy to do so — has five big projects, of which that is one example. All five projects are intended to eradicate delay in the system and make it better for the citizen, because things will be delivered faster; for the taxpayer, because the cost will ultimately be cheaper; and, probably most importantly, for the victim, because they will have less of a wait for the ultimate disposal of their case and for justice to be done.

Mr McGlone: It has been mentioned already — delivering justice "at pace and efficiently" was the phrase that you used — but a common thread that runs through quite a bit of this stuff is the need for communication. We have heard from agencies that people, often victims, do not know what is happening and why cases are taking so long. That adds to the frustration and, in many cases, the trauma that they experience.

You dealt with two tiers. What about the third tier: the courts?

Mr Widdis: I have no doubt whatsoever that the criminal courts — the judges, the courts service staff who support them and all the machinery around them — are working flat out in get through the backlog of cases that there has been since COVID. However, the cases are really complicated. We still think that there are improvements to be made in the way we handle them. One way is through direct committal, which the Assembly approved a number of years ago. The Minister has recently said that we are aiming for a final cut-off or go-live date for that of November next year. That is intended to help cases so that they do not have to go to the Magistrates' Court and be heard by a magistrate for committal before they go to the Crown Court: they can just be directly put into the Crown Court. That sounds nice and simple, but there are quite a lot of moving parts that need to align. That is something on which the courts will be seized and will be able to more work.

We are doing a bit of analysis with the courts about adjournments. It feels to us that there are quite a lot of adjournments in Crown Court cases. We have approximately 13 adjournments per Crown Court case, whereas in England and Wales the rate seems to be about seven or eight, so we are interested in the reasons for that. A decision to adjourn has to be an independent judicial one and we cannot interfere with that, but if we can help the judiciary in some way — if there is more information that we can provide or if there is something that we can help with, such as the flow of medical evidence — we will do what we can to evaluate what is causing those extra adjournments and see if we can reduce them. Every adjournment, as well as delay, is cost and, though it is not necessary for victims and witnesses to turn up for each one, there is more pressure for victims and witnesses every time a case drags on. Quite a lot is being done in that field.

Mr McGlone: Then there is the communications issue, which is pivotal for so many people. If people do not know what is going on, that does not mean that there is nothing going on, but their presumption is that nothing is happening. I am not sure how the communication strategy is delivered — you will know much better than me because you are a legal person — but it seems to be a significant deficiency in the system too.

Mr Widdis: One of the things that I anticipate coming out of the Criminal Justice Board agreeing a vision is a communications plan. That will not involve individuals being told about their cases, but it will be about how the system works as a whole and what we are doing to try to improve it.

On the issue of keeping victims and witnesses informed, as part of the transformation that individual organisations and the system have been on, the PPS has developed a victims and witnesses information unit, which keeps victims and witnesses informed on what is going on in particular cases. If there are individual deficiencies, I do not want to discuss them here, but, if you are content, I am happy to pick them up externally and pass them to the PPS.

The last part is communication with all the stakeholders who deliver the system to make sure that they understand what we are doing. Once the board has agreed on a vision, we will need all the participants to come with us on that. I hope that better communication will flow from the setting of the vision.

Mr McGlone: Thanks for that, Hugh. Chair, the Lady Chief Justice has said that she is content to come before the Committee to discuss some of the recent publicity that there has been about a case. It would also be helpful to have the PPS and the police before us to give evidence on the matter. I hope that I am not being presumptuous in saying that it would be useful to have them all here on the one day so that they are not tempted to pass the parcel a bit.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Yes. Is that in the light of the recent media interest in a certain live case that is still live?

Mr McGlone: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): OK. I am happy enough to try to sort that out.

Do members agree?

Miss Hargey: We could look at the broader issues, not just the one case.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Yes.

Mr Bradley: I go back to strategic recommendation 1 and the operational recommendations 1 and 2. The wording of strategic recommendation 1 is:

I would like to see "must" replacing "should" in that and in operational recommendations 1 and 2. "Should" means there is an option: you should do it, but you might not. However, if you "must" do something, you have to do it. Not only would I change "should" to "must" in all three instances, I would have a strategic time frame within which they must be implemented. That way, whether it was three months, six months or whatever is decided, there would be a definite period. That would do away with the lack of communication in many of the instances that we have been talking about today. It would provide a lot of clarity if the recommendations contained the word "must" and not "should". "Should" is a get-out clause.

Mr Widdis: I absolutely take the point, and completely agree. The precise phrasing of that comes from the Chief Inspector's report, so I cannot do anything about it, but I assure you that the Department and all the criminal justice organisations (CJOs) take CJINI's recommendations incredibly seriously. As with any external inspectorate or internal audit — whatever it is — you do a bit of thinking about whether you accept the recommendation, but we have accepted all those recommendations and therefore, effectively, they become "must" for us. We have said, "Yes, we accept the recommendations", so we are working through them.

CJINI's strategic recommendation aligns entirely with everything that I have been saying. The Minister intends to set a vision for the system as a whole, and the CJB was already heading towards that view. What CJINI has recommended is entirely in alignment with our view that a different approach to the way the system works can help get better outcomes.

We have already actioned the two operational recommendations. Mr Kingston asked me about that earlier. To reassure you, we have gone out to the organisations concerned. The first operational recommendation is for PSNI. They have looked at the recommendation and treated it as a "must". The second one is for the whole family, so we have gone out to everybody on that and they are coming back to us. If we get something further on that, as I was saying to Mr Kingston, I am happy to bring it back.

To reassure you, CJINI does a lot of reports, quite rightly. Everybody values what it does. There is one out today on the PPS. I am sure that PPS values what is in that report. We take reports by the Audit Office, His Majesty's Inspectorate and our own internal audit people incredibly seriously. Even if the language in a report is that we "should" do something, if we accept a recommendation and agree that it is a good thing to do, we effectively treat it as a "must". I hope that that is reassuring.

Mr Bradley: Thank you. I have another brief question. When you are rolling out the recommendations, can you produce a strategic time frame for when they should take place?

Mr Widdis: Again, as with all other similar reports, we will contact CJINI and say what we will do in response to the recommendations. Similarly, if internal audit or the Audit Office report on us, we will say, "Right, we accept the recommendation and we will do the following things in relation to it". Very often, there will be a timeline in that. CJINI said, for example, that we should have the vision work completed within six months, but that was not possible. We have already gone over the number of moving parts and the number of people who would need to discuss that to get it into place. We have spoken to CJINI about that, and it understands that it will take us more than six months. I assure you that when we get from the vision to a work plan, as I was saying to Miss Hargey, there will be a detailed work plan that, over a five-year period, will begin to set out exactly what will happen when on each of the individual strands of work.

In the same way, on speeding up justice, we can show that we are working towards direct committal in November 2026 and show the several steps that must happen before that to make it work. We have a date and a plan for all of those things lined up, and everybody knows who is doing what and when to deliver it. I hope that that is reassuring for the member.

Ms Ferguson: Thank you, Hugh. I have a general question. I am keen to know whether you have a timeline for when you will develop a work plan once the vision is agreed? Obviously, that will impact operationally and on when we will see a change. Likewise, on the bigger picture, what tools will you utilise to build that cohesion across our CJOs? Are you considering ring-fencing your budgets, for instance? You will need tools to deliver because, as we know, the situation is quite difficult. All the agencies are flat out, and there are huge delays, huge backlogs and huge staffing issues. Although it is great to have a vision and a work plan, you will need a bag of tools to be able to bring the workforce across the CJOs in under that vision. Has any thought been given to how you will deliver on it?

Mr Widdis: That is really helpful. Thank you so much for the vote of support that I will be able to deliver on it. When we go to the CJB in early December, we will say, "This is what we propose as our next steps. Will you agree that we will do this work plan?". I anticipate that it will agree to that, but I cannot promise that it will. That will include some proposals on timing. There is no point in hanging around once we have done it, but it will take us a while to develop a work plan for the next five years for something that is as complicated as the criminal justice system. It is the same with agreeing to transform Health: it takes a while to agree what that actually means regarding interventions. We will, however, do that at pace, as much as we can.

The Minister is adamant that we move fast on all those things, because, frankly, the Budget settlement for the Executive for this year, from the UK Government and other sources, will be so tight and so difficult for everybody that there is no point in waiting around when there are things that we can do to make things better and run more efficiently. That will affect all Departments: it is not specific to us. That was not a plea from the Department of Justice for a better outcome from the Budget.

You referred to tools. We have a digital strategy under development. On the basis that one theme in the emerging vision might be about running the system at pace, effectively and efficiently, you can see that digital would have a major place in that. I anticipate that things such as the digital strategy, which, to be fair, is for the whole justice system but includes a criminal justice element, could be used as tools to try to deliver change properly and efficiently.

You might envisage there being funding tools, but those would be difficult and would have to be agreed with everybody. For example, you might say that capital spend must align with the vision and the work plan, but the organisations would have to agree to that, and they might even agree some kind of criteria for how you spend capital money over the next while. That is really difficult, however, because the PPS, for example, gets its money from the Assembly — we are not in control of that — and the director of the PPS is the accounting officer to the Assembly.

If we got everybody to agree to our core objectives and our vision for what the system will look like in five years' time, we could get collective agreement to focus on measures that would support their delivery. That might mean, for example, more investment in Causeway, a focus on Themis or an individual identifier for each person in the criminal justice system, which, despite it being completely anonymised, would speed up the tracking. That is not quite ring-fencing, but those are the areas where you collectively agree to spend capital.

We will keep bidding for further transformation money, on the assumption that the transformation fund will continue to exist to some degree. Be under no illusion: this will be a transformative step for the criminal justice system. As I said, we were quite successful at the speeding up justice bit. The bids that we have in submitted include a bid for ending violence against women and girls (EVAWG). We have also submitted a bid for digital capacity in the PSNI to make the system even slicker, given the vast amount of information that it frequently needs to provide to inquiries, tribunals and individual cases. We are also seeking a digital evidence and information system for the whole justice system. Whether we can get all the organisations to agree to those things will be for the work plan, but I see them as being tools that we need for a positive conclusion.

Ms Ferguson: That is pertinent. Organisations need to be incentivised and able to see the bigger picture, building trust and relationships across the Department. Everyone can benefit from that. That is critical.

You mentioned the ending violence against women and girls strategy. I know that this session is about cohesion across the criminal justice organisations, but how effective is the Department at coordinating across Departments to create a unified approach, particularly on the delivery of the ending violence against women and girls strategy?

Mr Widdis: You would expect me to say that the Department is great at it. The EVAWG strategy was developed across the Executive and with partners, but TEO monitors and watches over it. We have a role to play in that, too. It is fair to say that the Department has driven the strategy quite well in the justice system and with our partners in it, and the Minister has championed it very persuasively. There is nobody in the system who has not picked up on it.

The Policing Board is completely behind it. The Chief Constable and the PSNI are completely behind it. The PSNI has its own campaign: the Power to Change campaign. We have enhanced the criminal justice law book by putting in all sorts of further offences. Non-fatal strangulation was mentioned, and we are bringing proposals about deepfake imagery and so on. Where we can, we are pushing such issues in our part of the Executive and where they interface with other areas. For example, we are liaising with the Housing Executive on homelessness issues and with our partners in mental health to reduce offending by those who get out of prison, particularly against women and girls. We are pushing everything that we can on that

Ms Ferguson: I declare an interest as vice chair of the all-party group on access to justice. It would be remiss of me to not mention legal aid. What is the position on that? The business case for legal aid seems to be a moving feast. The Minister has given assurances that there will be an uplift in the rates of legal aid. Can you provide clarity on that or a timeline for when that uplift will be introduced?

Mr Widdis: Colleagues from the enabling access to justice division are coming in after me. They might be able to give you a more precise answer. The uplift has been delayed a little bit more than we wanted it to be, partly because some of the proposals that have come into us from the system or stakeholders need to be worked through. Ideas have been brought in lately about things such as skeleton arguments. We are trying to make sure that those are all mopped up. The Criminal Bar Association (CBA) is deeply engaged in trying to persuade the Department that there should be particular outcomes, and every time those change, the business case must change as well. I will defer to my colleague Steven Allison, who is coming in for the next session, to provide the latest on the timeline.

The Department has been working incredibly hard on the matter. We regularly meet with the Bar, the Law Society and other stakeholders to push the process to a final conclusion and get the business case done so that we can get the uplift in the fees in place. Just to reassure everybody, the Minister has agreed that that will be backdated. I forget the date off the top of my head, but it will be backdated to the date that she took the decision, even if it takes us longer to get the business case done and the necessary legislation prepared and through the House.

Ms Ferguson: Have you done any modelling of the negative impact of that ongoing issue, particularly on access to solicitors in our towns and rural areas? There are local solicitors in those areas who used to focus on legal aid but are walking away from it. Do you have any thoughts on that or on what the impact has been over the past year and a half?

Mr Widdis: Forgive me, but do you mean the withdrawal of service?

Ms Ferguson: Yes.

Mr Widdis: It should not be affecting local solicitors too much, although I am happy to be corrected on that. We are really conscious about the impact on victims. If a victim's case is being delayed because of the situation, that is a matter of real concern to us. There are witnesses who anticipate being called by a certain date and then are not or are told, "You can't come on that date. We need you to come on some future date". No amount of positive engagement from the PPS will secure all the witnesses to a place where they may be willing to come back in six months' time. If a case is delayed because of the withdrawal of legal aid services, there is a risk that, ultimately, justice may not be done or that, at the very least, the issues will not be fully thrashed out. Also, it means that the victim has to wait even longer for justice. The Minister has been clear that the damage and harm done to victims is of such importance and magnitude that it simply does not justify any withdrawal of service. We encourage all the parties, particularly the Bar, to continue to engage with us, which they are doing. There was an issue a couple of weeks ago when we were speaking to the Bar Council. A few days later, CBA indicated that it might do something, but we think that we are now on a better path with that. We are, therefore, really conscious of the impact.

I anticipate that we will know what the overall impact of the business case will mean for solicitor income. Whether solicitors can translate that into saying, "That means that our business can continue to exist" is a slightly different issue, but we work regularly with the Law Society on that. When we were trying to decide on the correct level of fees, one of the Law Society's submissions to us was about the core cost of a solicitor's business and how much they need — they need a certain amount of profit, which is perfectly reasonable — on top of that. Broadly speaking, we think that the fees should be in that region. That was all taken into consideration in Tom Burgess's original report, and we continue to work with the Bar and the Law Society on all those issues.

Ms Ferguson: I reiterate that it is such a pressing issue. It boils down to access to justice. The withdrawal of services and lack of provision for legal aid cases is of grave concern because of the impact on victims who do not have access to a service —

Mr Widdis: I reiterate that point.

Ms Ferguson: — and it is so important to resolve that as soon as possible.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Hugh, I will take you back to the basics of the CJINI report, which gave the DOJ six months from its publication in November 2024 to:

When did the Criminal Justice Board first discuss that?

Mr Widdis: That is an interesting question, Chair. Forgive me: I am not sure, but I imagine that the report was brought to the Criminal Justice Board at its first meeting after the report was published. I am happy to check that, but that, I think, is the answer. It meets roughly four times a year.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): We have a letter from the Department that states:

Would that have been the first time?

Mr Widdis: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): It goes on:

That was nearly eight months after the report was published, yet CJINI had given you six months to facilitate Criminal Justice Board members' agreement.

Mr Widdis: Yes. I totally accept, as I said in answer Mr Bradley, that CJINI said, "Develop a vision, and do it within six months", but, realistically, given the complexity of the system, the number of partners that we have and their operational independence, you could not successfully deliver one in that time. You could impose or, rather, seek to impose one, but, as I tried to indicate earlier, given the operational independence of all the partners in the system, our assessment — mine and, I think, the Minister's — is that the only way of making it successful in the long term is to make sure that everybody is built into it and has a voice on it at the construction stage. That necessarily meant having detailed discussions with the PSNI and the PPS. As I mentioned, we brought in an independent facilitator to help with that so that it did not feel as though DOJ was just telling everybody the answer. I have mentioned the list of people who were spoken to as part of that, but I am happy to repeat it.

Doing some preliminary thinking, having those conversations, letting the people whom we talked to, such as the Lady Chief Justice, come up with their own thinking, feeding that back in and translating it into something — I doubt that I could do that properly or assure the Committee that it had been done properly within six months. We spoke to CJINI, saying, "We are embarking on this now: what do you think?". We have not had any pushback from the inspectorate about taking a little longer to do it. I would always love to get things done faster, but, in my assessment, trying to tell a complicated system of many parts to operate in a particular way would not be the most successful way of going about it.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): We are talking about transforming the system, and, within that, we are talking about speeding up justice. Where do you demonstrate the urgency in that?

Mr Widdis: We demonstrate urgency in the fact that we, along with others, continually transform the system and have done so for the 15 years since policing and justice was devolved. Nobody has sat around since then, waiting until this moment to come up with change: everybody was already working on considerable change. We talk about it less in the justice sector than we do in other places, or perhaps we subdivide it: we accept that the PSNI has transformed in the past 15 years; youth justice is different; the way in which probation works is different; and we have things such as enhanced combination orders (ECOs), diversion and restorative justice. We might not talk about those things as part of a coherent transformation of the whole justice system, but they have been happening, and that shows that everybody continues to work regularly on that. The work is absolutely driven at pace. None of the organisations, having decided that it wants to change something, sits around rather than doing that at pace. Sometimes those things cannot be properly funded and the organisations have to wait, because there simply is not enough money at the moment to do all of the things that we want to do to improve the system. Once people embark on those changes, however, they will make them.

You will know that we have rolled out ECOs, for example, as an alternative to short sentences and other issues, in order to get a better impact on the reoffending rate. The Probation Board and judicial colleagues have pushed those very successfully. We have rolled them out where we can, when we have the money. One of our bids to the transformation fund is for more money to roll out ECOs further, because we can see their benefits. It is not that we and our Probation Board colleagues are not driving that forward with pace, but we cannot always secure and carve out the necessary funding to deliver it. That does not mean that we do not want to do it.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Do you accept that the fact that there was no vision in the first place amounts to abject failure?

Mr Widdis: I do not accept that, Chair. For a system that is composed of individual parts, all of which have their own objectives, not to have a common vision is not unheard of. For those parts to agree, despite all of their independence, that they want to have that vision, and that they are willing to engage in a discussion on it, is not something that I would describe as a failure. That is quite a positive thing, and the Lady Chief Justice, the Chief Constable, the prosecutor, ourselves and the director of the Courts and Tribunals Service have leant into that as much as we can in order to make that a success.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): What is the Department of Justice's vision?

Mr Widdis: The Department's core mission is:

The Minister has set us some priorities for the next period, which include reducing offending, looking after victims, community safety and empowering people. We recognise that we have to invest in those areas within the Department in order to drive all that change elsewhere. Those are the core things that the Minister has set out for us to prioritise in the next period. Together with our mission, those effectively combine to make the Department's vision. That covers everything that is serviced by the Department, including civil justice, family justice, tribunals and firearms and explosives — all of the stuff that we do that is not really in the criminal justice system as a whole.

It is reasonable to say that, given all the moving parts and independence in the criminal justice system, the most successful vision will be the one that is formulated collectively around the leaders whom I mentioned and the organisations that we have been talking about as opposed to one that is imposed by me, for example, saying, "I think it should be whatever".

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): I would argue that the difference between a vision and a mission is that the vision sees what you want the Department to be in future. What do you want the Department to be?

Mr Widdis: Separating myself from the Minister, I would like us, as a Department, to be as efficient and effective as we possibly can be in delivering what the Minister asks of us and what the Programme for Government and the Executive want us to deliver, including better outcomes for citizens. Performance against those targets can be measured through the Programme for Government machinery. I will do that with probity and value for money in mind and make sure that I can account to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). That is what I would like the Department to be.

Ultimately, however, what the Department does in terms of policy — for example, changes to the law and determining what should and should not be a criminal offence — is determined by ministerial direction. Currently, that direction is coming from the incumbent Minister. I want the Department to be fit to serve its Minister and whichever Minister we have in future, in the same way that the Civil Service tries to be fit to serve the Executive of today and the Executive of tomorrow.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Hugh, that is all at a very high level. Do you have a timescale for all of that?

Mr Widdis: It is happening on an ongoing basis. The Department is already great. One of the first things that I said when I came to the Committee last year was that the Department of Justice already had an incredible reputation. When I came into the Department and was able to look at it from the inside, as opposed to partnering with it over the years as its legal adviser, that was even more obvious to me when I saw the quality of the people around it. That goes for the Department and the system.

I hope that I have helped in the past year to get some coherence, for example, on that issue and similar issues. I hope that I am persuading the Committee that we are here to work with the Committee and the Assembly to deliver this.

Chair, you asked me about timescales. My timescale agenda is always about pace, but it is realistic; it is pace with quality, within what is affordable and without doing damage to things that are also important, as well as doing things promptly. Again, with the Committee's support, and maybe some support from the Assembly around diverting a little bit more funding towards the justice system so it can make those improvements, I commit to the Committee that I will drive that as much as I can inside the system with the time available to me.

Miss Hargey: I have a quick but important question on finances. Obviously, the new legacy Bill is going through Westminster at the moment, and there are nine outstanding inquests. There is to be a new legacy commission and information recovery body, and there are also two public inquiries to be looked at. There is a big issue about resourcing, even PSNI resourcing, to service all of that. We know that, with the Omagh Bombing Inquiry, other information is being put on hold to allow the PSNI to service that one. You can write back to us, or if you have a quick answer now, Hugh, on the views of the Department about the resourcing of all of that. Has there been any engagement with the British Secretary of State or with the Government more directly?

Mr Widdis: I am happy to give a brief answer now and to come back with some more. We got a copy of the Bill on the same day that it was introduced in Parliament. The Minister has been very clear throughout that there are legacy costs, which are very substantial, and that some of those do not fall to the Executive to meet, let alone the Department of Justice or partners such as the PPS; they fall to the UK Government. The Minister has been very clear about that, as have other Executive partners. For Omagh, for example, from recollection, the PSNI thinks that it will need something like £2·5 million just to service its giving of information to the Omagh Bombing Inquiry, which is quite right. It should do that; it is a statutory inquiry, and it has a statutory duty to respond to it, but where is the £2·5 million going to come from? There is an argument there, and I know that the Minister and the Finance Minister have put the argument to HM Treasury with regard to making sure that these things are properly funded. You will have seen the Chief Constable identifying an increasing cost of civil claims in the legacy space as well, and the argument, inevitably, is that it will be an ongoing pressure, regardless of the quantum of it. The Chief Constable and the Minister would say that it is a scale that was not anticipated in 2010, and therefore it is something that must be taken to the UK Government. I am happy to come back with a bit more detail about the costs of particular elements of that.

Miss Hargey: That would be great, because I concur that it should not come out of the block grant, for the reasons that you have outlined. Thank you.

Mr Widdis: Just as a supplement to that, the new legacy body arrangements necessarily will cause costs for devolved organisations, just to be totally clear about that. If we — DOJ, PSNI or PPS — have to do more inquests or put more information into an enhanced inquisitorial process with the new body, that will have a cost. The argument is that the cost derives from the fact that it is UK legislation, not anything that the Executive have come up with, and therefore a case could be made to the UK Government to fund that. We work very closely with DOF colleagues, as you know, on all of those things, and the way to approach Treasury is not for individual Departments or Ministers writing to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. The Department of Finance has an ongoing series of issues that it discusses with Treasury all the time in order to get the best possible settlement for Northern Ireland.

Mr Beattie: I have a very quick one, Hugh, and you might want to come back on this one as well. I am not asking for an answer now. The Policing Board review published its report on 30 January this year, and it was quite critical of the DOJ, describing the tripartite arrangements as "a two-legged stool" and a "parent-child relationship".

When are we likely to see some of the outcomes of that review? When are we going to start action on that?

Mr Widdis: I do not have that information with me, but I am really happy to come back to the Committee as soon as I can with that.

Mr Beattie: That is good enough.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): OK. It just remains for me to thank you very much for your time today, Hugh. It has been a marathon session, and, as you would expect, being the permanent secretary, you were being hit with all sorts of issues and areas. Again, thank you very much, and I look forward to working with you to try and enhance things and make things better.

Mr Widdis: A pleasure as ever, Chair. How nice to see you. Thank you, Committee. I hope that the Committee found that useful. I am really happy to do it any time.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Thank you.