I select the Committee on Standards and Privileges and nominate Mr Roy Beggs.

Is the Member who has been nominated willing to take up the office for which he has been nominated?

I am willing to serve in that capacity.

I therefore announce the appointment of Mr Roy Beggs as the Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Standards and Privileges.

I call Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, as the nominating officer of the political party for which the formula laid down in Standing Orders gives the next highest figure, to select an available Standing Committee and to nominate a person who is a member of his party and of the Assembly to be Deputy Chairman of it.

Go raibh maith agat, a Chathaoirligh. I select the Public Accounts Committee and nominate Ms Sue Ramsey. Go raibh míle maith agat.

Is the Member who has been nominated willing to take up the office for which she has been nominated?

I am, a Chathaoirligh.

I therefore announce the appointment of Ms Sue Ramsey as Deputy Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.

I call Mr McGrady, as the nominating officer of the political party for which the formula laid down in the Standing Orders gives the next highest figure, to select the last available Standing Committee and to nominate a person who is a member of his party and of the Assembly to be Deputy Chairman of it.

I select the Audit Committee and nominate Mr Alban Maginness.

Is the Member who has been nominated willing to take up the office for which he has been nominated?

I am willing.

I therefore announce the appointment of Mr Alban Maginness as Deputy Chairman of the Audit Committee.

That completes the nomination and appointment of the Chairmen and Deputy Chairmen of the relevant Standing Committees.

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Allowances to Assembly Members and
Office Holders Bill: Second Stage

I beg to move

Contrary to the rumours, the lectern was not moved further back so that it would be nearer the exit door. I am sorry that we could not delay the Second Stage of this Bill until after lunch, for there would be less chance then of my being eaten alive.

The Assembly Commission, under the Northern Ireland Act, is charged with making the provisions and providing the property, resources and services for the Assembly. As Members may recall, in February the Assembly unanimously agreed the recommendations of the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB).

I hope that Members have had a look at the Bill and at the explanatory note, which gives an accurate, layman's version of the measure. I do not intend going into great detail; I will simply give the background to some of the provisions.

The Bill does four things. Essentially it enacts the recommendations of the SSRB. Clause 1, for example, enacts recommendation 25 of the SSRB's report, which was that a resettlement grant be payable in respect of continuous service in the applicable body to any Member of the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales or the Northern Ireland Assembly who, at a general election to that body, does not stand for re-election or who stands but is not re-elected.

It was further recommended that the formula used at Westminster to calculate the level of grants be adopted for each of the devolved bodies. Subsections (1) to (4) of clause 1 enact that recommendation, and schedule 1 puts in place the formula used at Westminster.

Clause 2, subsections (1) to (4), enacts recommendation 26 of the SSRB report, and clause 3, subsections (1) to (4), enacts recommendation 27. The recommendation on winding-up allowances, at paragraph 66 of the report, is similarly enacted in clause 4. [Interruption]

Order. May I ask Members to keep their conversation to a minimum in deference to the Member who is presenting.

These are very simple allowances that reflect exactly what is available at Westminster, where there is provision to enable payments to be made to Members who do not get re-elected or who may have to retire because ill health prevents them from performing their duties. The winding-up allowance enables bills for winding up a constituency or other legitimate office to be paid if a Member fails to be re-elected.

I am aware that this is a Second Stage debate and that that is not the same as a determination or a ministerial statement. While I am happy to answer questions, the precise details of this Bill will be dealt with, clause by clause, subsection by subsection, line by line, when it is remitted to the Committee stage and sent to the Finance Committee. There will be an opportunity then to go through it in great detail.

A Chathaoirligh, I do not want to make many points. While there is a clear need, in principle, for provision for some sort of sickness benefit or redundancy package - we have responsibility in that regard - there are some matters in the proposed legislation that I am concerned about. I want to put it on record that I am not entirely satisfied with everything in the Bill as it is at present. However, my party does support the need for such a Bill and will deal with it, as Mr Fee has advised, at a later stage.

I do not intend to speak for very long. Indeed, I am not in a very good frame of mind to speak on this issue at all. For me it connotes many things. It deals with specific issues and with circumstances which may befall people like me. Yesterday there were complaints about the little parties who managed to scrape in to be the last of the 108 Assembly Members. That does not apply to me. Neither does it apply to, for instance, the Women's Coalition. Before the larger parties look down their noses at small parties they might like to look at how many people they had elected in fifth and sixth places - especially in sixth place.

I may yet find myself in the difficult position of not having been elected. However, what I have to say comes not from my personal feeling in respect of this issue but, rather, from my sense of anger and hurt that the degree of inclusion that was promised in the Good Friday Agreement was lost in the Northern Ireland Act - and lost totally when the carve-up began. We are talking about allowances to Members, and not only in terms of their basic salary. Some of them are or will be office holders - Ministers, junior Ministers, Committee Chairpersons, Committee Deputy Chairpersons - who will all benefit incrementally, potentially for the rest of their lives, as a result of a job being doled out to them on the basis of patronage.

Just as we were looking at the Assembly membership to see who is not in government, or in one of the jobs given out by the Government, we heard the leader of Sinn Féin ask a foolish question this morning. He asked what a totally oppositional party was. Well, in case he has not worked it out yet, and in case the DUP has not worked it out yet, let me say that it is any party within the Northern Ireland Government or Executive - call it what you will. In effect it is a Government with executive authority.

All of that brings me to the fact that John Fee, for his sins, and Robert Coulter before that and Eileen Bell before that again have had to stand here and take the flak. They certainly take the flak from the media and from the broader populace for the doling out of patronage to Assembly Members. It is a legal requirement that we deal with these issues, and I am happy to deal with them. It gives me a chance to air my serious disquiet at the attitudes emanating from the larger parties.

We have just seen it - and I am sorry if I digress a little - in respect of the nomination for the Chairmanship of the Public Accounts Committee. I cast no aspersions on the now Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, but the larger parties should have done the honourable thing and realised that the best person to scrutinise the Government, the one able to do so most openly, would have been somebody in opposition - preferably in positive opposition, but certainly in opposition.

However, that was not to be the case. I detect that either the control freaks are at work or patronage has to be doled out. And we are about to deal with another case in point. We are about to deal with a 17-person Committee, nine members of which belong to either the UUP or the SDLP. Anybody who has done rudimentary mathematics will be able to work out that out of a 17-person Committee, nine is a majority. This again smacks of sickening control, and no doubt there will be other requests put to the Assembly to pay Chairmen and Deputy Chairmen of Committees not yet agreed to. There will be direct and severe opposition to this sort of thing - as much as two Members can muster.

What happened to the theory of public service? I understand the effort that a Minister puts in and the business of paying wages that will attract people into politics. But what about Chairmen and Deputy Chairmen and the looming spectre of paying allowances to Whips?

How far down are we prepared to take this? In my spare time I help my secretary to clean the office. Is there any chance of getting a couple of bob for that? The amount of patronage and the control-freak atmosphere - mostly among the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP - are becoming ludicrous. In relation to the Commission, Members will recollect Gerry Adams being the Pied Piper of the poor, and the DUP virtually clearing their Benches so that they would not be tainted by such a terrible issue. The Commission reached agreement by consensus, so the figures that we are debating are as much a decision by the DUP and Sinn Féin as by the Ulster Unionist Party, the SDLP and the Alliance Party.

I have said that I am unhappy about some issues in the legislation. We can agree the principle of legislation and argue about the details. That is the purpose of the legislation. We too are new boys on the block.

I wish I did not have to suggest that the Member is pulling my leg. If one does not voice one's disquiet on Second Stage, perhaps one does not have that much disquiet. The Member will feel disquiet in future over issues that are not quite so directed towards individual Members. There is consistent narking and arguing in the outside world about who gets what, where and when. We are all lumped together, and nobody will remember who was on the Commission or who made the decisions. Hansard will contain no commentary from the DUP on the issue, and the Pied Piper of the poor will have had his position written in public.

Will the Member give way?

In a moment. Why did Mr Adams make his public pronouncement if, as Mr Maskey says, they are new kids on the block? It was for public consumption, probably in much the same way as Mr McCartney's remarks on the issue.

There are people here who feel aggrieved, but not because of what we are not getting. There are only two of us, and we did not expect patronage in terms of Chairs, Deputy Chairs or Ministries, but we did expect a degree of consultation and an absolute understanding, at least in terms of Committees, of proper proportionality.

The small parties are not homogeneous. We are a very broad church - perhaps more so than the Executive. However, when this 17-person Committee hits the Table today it will be offered two places for the Opposition. That is in a 17-person Committee that will oversee the work of the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister. It is meant to be a scrutiny Committee, but how many people in receipt of patronage from the First or Deputy First Minister will be scrutinising their work? I guess that nine of them, which is the majority in that Committee -

I congratulate Mr Ervine on the fact that the penny has finally dropped. Nobody has done more to bolster this iniquitous situation. He and his colleague have continually lent their support to the Ulster Unionists to ensure that this system will continue. [Interruption]

Order. When a Member gives way it is not possible to haul it back. That may mean that in future Members will be cautious about giving way. Anyway, at this point Mr Morrow has the Floor.

It has finally dawned on Mr Ervine that he is to be discarded like a sucked orange. He was well enough informed about that long ago. He is now surplus to requirements in the Assembly, and he is learning the hard facts - too little too late.

As the DUP is spending the £106,000 of which it took advantage from the first day of devolution it will hardly complain very loudly.

My arguments are made on the basis of the Good Friday Agreement, which supported the inclusion that there was meant to be and the consultation that such inclusion requires. The Agreement was very clear and sensible about that. I do not know if the word "shafted" is parliamentary language, but I feel that I have been shafted in a cross-community sense, and not simply by the grand democrats.

I am sorry about Mr Morrow's intervention as it has deflected me. My Colleague and I take decisions, as we have done in the past. We wore T-shirts that were not about patronage; we went to jail and earned nothing for the luxury; and we have suffered the indignity of the loss of family, friends and relations. I hear false piety from the DUP day in, day out. I am disappointed at the intervention - it was a cheap shot from a party that is spending £106,000 which came to it with devolution. One might have called a point of order to find out if it was all right to be in a paid post in the Commission and also take a chairmanship, which the larger parties will attempt to have paid. However, we will worry about that later.

I have listened to you in the past and have tremendous respect for you, but I take great offence at some of the things you are saying. You have alleged that my Colleagues and Friends and I have been handed out some sort of patronage. I can tell you that there are no "snouts in the trough" in my party, nor have there ever been. Members of my party have given years of dedicated public service at great personal risk. To be told that we are indulging ourselves and taking advantage of patronage is very offensive.

May I encourage Members not to address each other directly but to speak through the Chair. It is often when people feel most strongly that they are inclined to address each other. That is precisely why it is best to speak through the Chair.

I am sure that Mr McClelland is becoming an expert on Standards and Privilege. He is going to be on that Committee, and, while he is not being paid at the moment, he undoubtedly will be. At some point he will be able to challenge me if he believes that I am being insulting. I am an elected representative who is entitled to say what he believes as long as the language is parliamentary. Is that correct, Mr Speaker?

That is entirely correct, so long as it is apposite.

This all relates to the issue of inclusivity and, therefore, to the movement away from the Good Friday Agreement. The tragedy of this is that I will be maligned and misunderstood. People will believe that we want a share of something. We wanted to understand what was happening, and we wanted inclusivity. At every turn we have seen the large parties not adhering to that principle. It is a tragedy that they, including the DUP, have not.

There are still certain matters to be ironed out if there is to be any hope of inclusivity, and I ask the larger parties to give this some consideration now. There is an experience shared by the larger parties, and, while we may not be able to get in the way very much in the Assembly, on the ground we can get in the way quite well. We have the capacity to be on the hustings, to rap the doors, to work our advice centres and to ensure that the larger parties know that politically we exist. If they are not doing their jobs properly perhaps we will seek some benefit from that.

Yesterday we heard Mr Dodds, the Minister for Social Development, who I would have thought would want to see people climbing the ladder, being rather disparaging about those who had crept in through the back door. Of course, quite a few in his party benefited from seats won far lower down the order than those won by Members from the smaller parties that I am attempting to represent. Is there some design that we make this Assembly so expensive, given that it costs £102,000 twice for prime-ministerial posts, that when the four-year review comes round some of the wee people will be expected to drop off? If I were worried about that I would be wondering how much more worried some of the UUP, the SDLP, the DUP and Sinn Féin must be. If we are talking about who got the sixth seats it does not follow that it was Members from the small parties.

I speak purely as Minister of Finance and Personnel and will not comment on remarks about what is or is not consistent or compatible with the Good Friday Agreement. As Minister of Finance and Personnel I acknowledge that both Bills have public expenditure implications, which have been included in the draft Budget presented to the Assembly earlier.

It is only right that the Commission's proposals which impact on public expenditure be considered alongside other spending plans, and I take no issue with those who have raised questions, searching or otherwise. These cannot be seen in isolation as they impact directly on resources that will be available in the future for departmental spending. I confirm that, if approved by the Assembly, appropriate financial provision will be included in future appropriation Bills.

I will have a number of questions to which I hope Mr Fee can respond in his summing-up, but I want to raise some concerns first.

May I say to Mr Morrow that there is no one here surplus to requirements. All Members went out and got a mandate. Whether from the Executive or from the Opposition, none of them are surplus to requirements.

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I did not say that they were surplus to requirements; I said that they were now perceived to be surplus to requirements. Their function was to bolster up this regime, but they are no longer used. I do not say that in a disparaging way. That is the way they are perceived. They are no longer required.

Members came here in response to the will of the people, expressed through a referendum that led to an election. Some of those who stood in the election are now in the Executive. If they continue to see themselves as surplus to requirements they should say so. It is not fair comment to say that others are perceived in that way.

With regard to the issue of who is in the Opposition, it was fair for Mr Robinson to say that his party would not be nominating anyone for the Public Accounts Committee chairpersonship. I would like to have heard how many other parties felt the same way. But that was lost. At all the transitional seminars that Assembly Members attended before devolution every analyst and international commentator said that the chairmanship of the Public Accounts Committee should not be held by a person on the Government side. It is a great disappointment that parties did not recognise that.

We have just agreed the Chairpersons and Deputy Chairpersons of these Committees, but it has not been agreed that they should be paid. So far as I am aware, it will require a change of legislation for that to happen. They are at present not recognised for payment under the Standing Orders. I urge both those Members who became office holders as a result of this morning's nomination under d'Hondt and the parties which sit on the Business Committee to take note of the fact that all our decisions reflect on what happens in each of the Departments. I make that comment particularly in response to the comments of the Minister of Finance and Personnel. This is a public expenditure issue.

The members of the Commission should once again review the difference between what was recommended by the Senior Salaries Review Body, which is independent, and the final result, particularly in relation to payment to the members of the Commission.

In relation to the resettlement allowance for Members, the memorandum accompanying the Bill states

Does the 15 or more years' service apply only to the latter age group or to both?

In my role as an Assembly Commissioner I do not know that I have the competence to respond to much of what has been said, and I do not intend to do so. We shall have to respond in writing to Ms McWilliams's final question. The arrangements that we are putting in place are outlined in the schedule to the Bill and are precisely the same as those that apply in Westminster and, I understand, in Scotland and Wales. We would need to study this table to work out precisely at what age and length of service the different levels of percentage kick in. We shall write to Ms McWilliams on that point.

I detected no other detailed questions during the debate, and I know that the Bill will go to the Finance Committee if it gets a Second Stage. I thank the Minister of Finance and Personnel for his commitment to honour any future decision of the Assembly in this regard.

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Financial Assistance for Political Parties Bill

I beg to move

The Assembly needs to make provision urgently to take account of the fact that the arrangements for giving financial assistance to political parties fell with devolution. There is no authority under the Northern Ireland Act for the Assembly Commission to make payments to political parties, and this Bill appears to the Assembly Commission to be the only legal mechanism for ensuring two things. First, it enables us to continue, in the short term, to make provision for political parties. Secondly, it enables us to introduce a requirement that the Assembly Commission, in consultation with all Members of the Assembly, bring forward a new, detailed scheme under the Bill before 31 March 1999.

There are only four clauses in the Bill. The first one is permissive - it allows the Assembly Commission to make payments to the parties. The second places a requirement on the Commission to bring forward a scheme before 31 March 1999. The clause on transition agreements would approve an arrangement whereby the Assembly Commission would continue to pay the political parties at the same rates as applied before devolution. That is a short-term measure to allow us to ensure sure that over Christmas and the new year the parties will continue to get financial support to pay their staff and the running costs of their offices.

The real import of the Bill is that it will require a new scheme to be designed by the Commission. I am aware that many parties are not happy with the existing scheme and that the old scheme did not make provision for all sorts of contingencies. In my view this Bill will enable Members to devise a decent, proper and equitable scheme in the new year, which will properly provide support for the political parties.

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