FOI 57-26: A request for information held by the Assembly Commission concerning Justice Bill Amendment Groups
Information Standards Freedom of Information Response
Our ref: FoI 57-26
8 September 2026
Freedom of Information Act 2000
The Northern Ireland Assembly Commission (‘Assembly Commission’) has processed your request dated 9 August 2026 in line with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). Your request was as follows:
“[P]lease provide existing administrative and procedural recorded information held by the Assembly Commission, Bill Office and/or relevant Committee office concerning the following Justice Bill amendment groups:
- Part 1 biometrics amendments noted by the Justice Committee on 28 May 2026 as containing changes not present in earlier drafts;
- amendments 66–69 and 127;
- amendments 70–78;
- amendments 88–91.
Please provide any existing amendment register, submission log, version list, procedural tracker or equivalent record showing, where held:
- amendment number/title;
- submitting member or Minister;
- date and time first submitted;
- dates/times of materially different versions;
- number of versions held;
- whether Bill Office/parliamentary drafting assistance was provided;
- dates on which the Justice Committee office received draft or final text;
- date tabled/published;
- date debated and outcome;
- any later Further Consideration Stage submission relating to the same provision;
- relevant Bill Office or Committee file/reference number.
Please also provide the applicable blank form, guidance or administrative procedure governing submission and handling of amendments during this Bill…”
Our response
The Assembly Commission holds information relevant to your request. Much of this information is exempt from disclosure under section 21 of the FOIA, as it is reasonably accessible to you through links on the Assembly website. We have provided links to this information with reference to the headings in your request.
The Assembly Commission does not hold the above recorded information in the manner requested. The Bill Office saves in a digital folder each amendment tabled (usually by email) and then publishes each amendment on a Notice of Amendments. No reference number is generated upon saving the tabled amendment in the digital file, however upon processing the amendment on specialist legislative drafting software a “D number” is provided and these have been added to the attached table in Appendix A.
Amendments selected by the Speaker for debate are subsequently published on a Marshalled List – these are available on the Justice Bill webpage of the Assembly Commission website. The D numbers are also listed in the table of contents of PDF versions of amendment lists published on the Assembly webpages.
The Justice Committee published the draft amendments provided by the Department of Justice (‘the Department’), as detailed below, on a dedicated section on the Justice Bill. The Committee does not usually publish correspondence from the Department in relation to amendments but has included them in this instance in the interests of openness and transparency. These are attached separately in the relevant Appendix listed below.
Appendix A shows the information received by the Bill Office and/or the Committee in respect of each amendment referenced in the request and the dates required. The relevant documents are attached.
Appendices B & C show the administrative procedure governing submission and handling of amendments during the Bill process.
Appendix D shows the Departmental correspondence relevant to this request.
Part 1 Biometrics amendments (including amendments 66 and 67)
The Committee first received draft text of the Justice Minister’s proposed Biometrics amendments to the Justice Bill on 28 October 2024. Copies of the covering letter and draft text are attached.
The amendment text is available on the Committee’s webpage at Planned Amendments.
A further draft of the amendments was received on 1 October 2025 after the Bill had been migrated onto new legislative drafting software – there were no changes to the text of these amendments other than the line number referencing the proposed point of insertion for new amendment text. The line numbers were changed due to the slightly different formatting of the Bill when moved to the new software. A copy of the covering letter is attached along with the text of the amendment. This is the version of the amendments that is published on the webpage linked to above.
The Committee did not receive a copy of the final text of the amendments directly. As per Assembly procedure, the final versions of the ministerial amendments were tabled with the Bill Office on behalf of the Minister. The amendments were published on a Notice of Amendments which is available to the via the Assembly Commission website.
All of the Minister’s biometrics amendments were agreed by the Assembly during Consideration Stage on the dates set out in the table in Appendix A.
Amendments 68 – 69 & 127
The text of these amendments was shared with the Committee by the Department on 26 May 2026 – copy attached. A final draft of the amendments was tabled with the Bill Office on the dates and times set out in Appendix A and published on a Notice of Amendments and later a Marshalled List of Amendments. Both amendments were agreed to by the Assembly.
Amendments 70
The text of Amendment 70 was shared with the Committee initially on 4 December 2024 with the policy background provided on 8 January 2025. As above, an updated version was provided subsequent to the move to the new software and is also attached. This is the published version.
Amendment 70 was tabled with the Bill Office, published on a Notice of Amendments and then the Marshalled List and voted on by the Assembly on the dates/times set out in Appendix A.
Amendments 71 – 78 and 88 - 90
As each of these amendments was tabled by an individual Member, draft text of the amendments was not provided to the Committee in advance.
The final draft of each of the amendments was formally tabled with the Bill Office, published and voted on as set out in Appendix A.
Amendment 91
The text of amendment 91 was provided to the Committee on 3 March 2026 – copy attached.
Amendment 91 was tabled with the Bill Office, published and voted on as per the dates set out in Appendix A.
Some information within the appendices (D-Q) has been redacted to remove personal data, namely signatures of staff. Personal details are exempt from disclosure under section 40(2) of the FOIA, which provides that information is exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject and satisfies one of three conditions. ‘Personal data’ is defined by the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).
The Assembly Commission is satisfied that the condition set out at section 40(3A) (a) of the FOIA is met in respect of the information withheld. The condition is that ‘disclosure of the information to a member of the public otherwise than under this Act…would contravene any of the data protection principles…’
The data protection principles are set out in Article 5 of the UK GDPR. The first principle is that processing of personal data must be fair, lawful and transparent. Processing is ‘lawful’ under the first principle if it satisfies one or more of the conditions in Article 6 of the UK GDPR.
The Assembly Commission does not consider that any condition in Article 6(1) of the UK GDPR would permit the disclosure of staff signatures or staff names below a senior level.
Further Information
You may request an internal review of this decision by the Assembly Commission. If you wish to request such a review, please write to me at the above address. If, after that review, you are dissatisfied with the way in which the Assembly Commission has handled your request for information, you may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.
Your request for information and our response may be published in the disclosure log maintained by the Assembly Commission under a publication scheme agreed with the ICO. The request and our response will be anonymised.
Yours sincerely,
INFORMATION STANDARDS
