Assembly plans for uncertain future

By Gareth Gordon
Political correspondent

The assembly that may not last has met to plan for a future it may not have.

This is still the "transitional assembly" - we may or may not get the proper one next Monday.

But MLAs have to be ready should the deal be done and so at noon they began to discuss the draft ministerial code and draft standing orders.

"Draft" seemed to be the operative word.

He may have won the election but DUP leader Ian Paisley seemed to think Stormont was becoming a cold house - though not just for unionists.

He rose to his feet to address the Speaker Eileen Bell on a matter of the utmost gravity.

"I don't know what is wrong with this house today but we have had problems with our recording machines; we have a clock up here which does not know whether it goes or not and we have a breath of what I would call stepmother's air coming round us in this building today," said the unionist leader.

"So I think I should draw your attention to that.

"We would be more comfortable if you could hear all the nice things that are being said and it would be more comfortable to us if this draft could be stopped and we could have some hot air in this chamber."

Now hot air is not normally a commodity in short supply at Stormont but Mrs Bell agreed this was an exception.

The problem seemed to be an excluder - though talk of exclusion is normally a problem in the assembly, especially for Sinn Fein (more of which later).

The Speaker revealed she had asked the whips if it might be in order to adjourn for half an hour "as so that we can get heated and let the engineers see what's happening".

"It is actually very cold and we'll have to make sure that it doesn't effect our debate...so be as hot as you can members," she added.

Actually things only got hot whenever the SDLP rose to speak.

They were acting as a de facto "opposition" - in the real assembly the party will take its one seat in an Executive and the "united community" group made up of Alliance, the Green Brian Wilson and Dr Kieran Deeny will perform that role.

But with Alex Attwood leading the charge the now shrunken SDLP group set out its opposition to the pledge of office being included in the ministerial code.

The gist of his argument was that the pledge should not be legally enforceable - but enforceable only by the assembly.

His argument is that this could lead to the functions of the assembly being continually dragged through the courts.

Accountability

But the issue for the DUP was ministerial accountability.

Peter Robinson said that unless the executive had the power to retrospectively approve ministerial decisions they would not support the ministerial code and the secretary of state would have to impose his own.

When people speak longingly about politics here becoming "boring" and "normal" this is undoubtedly the kind of debate they have in mind.

But if this was a test of whether Sinn Fein and the DUP can work together, they seemed to pass it up until the point in the discussion of standing orders when Sinn Fein made it clear they could not support rules which refer to the possible exclusion of ministers.

However, the St Andrews Agreement Act enables the secretary of state to impose the rules anyway and the issue has now been referred to him.

Actually Peter Hain's name was rarely mentioned. But with D-Day looming he was the ghost in the room.

Short of him flinging open the doors and shouting "it's devolution or dissolution" for the umpteenth time he could hardly have played more of a part.

For the majority of the MLAs present there is little that can be done to influence that situation.

Last week they met to sign the roll - next week they hope they still have a role.

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