Criminal Justice (Sentencing etc) Bill

Committees of the Northern Ireland Assembly

1. Introduction

The Northern Ireland Assembly Commission is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This Privacy Notice sets out how the Northern Ireland Assembly Committees use and protect any information we collect from you, or that you provide to us through the work of Committees. Please read the notice to understand our practices regarding personal data and how we will treat it. We will ensure that any personal information you provide is protected and used in line with data protection legislation.

2. Why we collect information

Assembly Committees collect information in the process of undertaking their statutory and other roles, including advising and assisting the Executive in the formulation of policy, legislation and undertaking inquiries. Information may be provided by you in the form of written submissions, correspondence or when appearing as a witness.

Any information you provide will be stored on the Assembly’s secure IT system and be subject to the Assembly’s retention and disposal schedule unless otherwise stated.

3. What we will do with your information

Your information will only be collected when absolutely necessary and it will only be used for the purposes it was provided. Further information on the different ways information can be collected and how it is used is outlined below:

Committee Meetings

You should note that the majority of committee meetings are public meetings and are therefore broadcast live from the Assembly’s website (and on occasions the coverage may be picked up by the media). Video recordings of Committee meetings are retained and shared on the Committee’s webpage and on YouTube, video recordings of committee meetings are retained until the end of the mandate.

If you are appearing as a witness, you will have provided contact information to the committee staff. This information will be stored in a secure manner, accessed only by those staff directly involved with this process, and only used for the purpose provided, including follow-up from your evidence session. This information will be retained until the end of the mandate.

During some evidence sessions, Hansard provide an official report of your evidence session (the Official Report is a substantially verbatim transcript of the proceedings). If they do this during your evidence session, they will contact you to provide you with a copy of the transcript of your evidence session. These records are published on the Assembly’s website and retained for historical purposes.

You will be advised in advance of your appearance at a committee meeting as to whether your appearance will be video recorded and whether your evidence will be transcribed for the Official Report.

Correspondence

On occasions, members of the public send correspondence to committees which contains personal data. Individual committees take decisions on how they deal with items of correspondence. However, your correspondence will not be shared with departments or public bodies without your explicit consent. We may use the contact details you provide to contact you in relation to your correspondence. Items of correspondence are retained by the Committee in line with its retention and disposal schedule.

Written Submissions

Committees, on occasion, will seek written evidence on a particular topic. This may be linked to a piece of legislation or a committee inquiry. If you make a written submission to a Committee, you should be aware that submissions are published on the Committee’s website and within the Committee’s report on the topic. Your submission will be published along with your name and position, unless you ask that these details are not published alongside your submission. Committee staff will seek to ensure that any other personal data contained in your submission is redacted from the Report.

We may use the contact details you provide to contact you in relation to your submission. For example, we may also get in contact to see if you would like to attend a committee meeting to present your submission or if we would like you to provide further written information. Please inform us when you send a written submission if you would like us retain your contact details and contact you for these purposes. If you decide to opt into further contact, you may opt out of further contact at any point by letting us know.

Committee Events

A Committee uses events to allow it to seek the views of stakeholders on policy issues. Committees will seek to invite relevant stakeholders to events. If you provide your contact information to the Assembly in the course of arranging your attendance at an event, that information will only be used for the purposes of attending that event. At the event you will have the option to sign up for further contact in relation to the work of the Committee.

It should be noted that at the event, photographs or videos may be taken. Your invitation will make this clear and state how the images/video will be used (ie. In reports, social media etc.). However, if you wish to not appear in any images or video please advise staff upon your arrival and they will advise you on how that can be accommodated.

4. Your rights

If you have any enquiries in relation to Committee procedures, please contact the Committee office.

If you would like to: engage any of the rights that you have under the legislation (such as the right of access); ask a question; or make a complaint about how your information is used; please contact the Assembly’s Information Governance Officer at:

• Email: dpo@niassembly.gov.uk
• Tel: (028) 90521147

You can also make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you believe we have not used your information in line with the law. ICO Contact details on their website: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ (opens in new window)