A slimmer Executive?

On Monday, a debate was had in Private Members’ Business to restructure the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly, essentially to reduce the disproportionate number of representatives that Northern Ireland has.  The UUP motion (following Cameron’s example of reform?) was supported by Alliance and the DUP, an ammendment was propsed by the SDLP and it was rejected by SF. 

The motion:

That this Assembly supports, in principle, the restructuring of the Northern Ireland Executive and the Assembly in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government; and calls on the First Minister and deputy First Minister to update the Assembly on the proposals for the creation of an Efficiency Review Panel, as announced on 9 April 2009, and to agree to implement a review and produce a report on the issue of the number of MLAs and government Departments in the next Assembly, within the next six months.

You can read the transcript of the debate here

UUP implodes further

No sign of it on Slugger yet, but BBC reports that Mark Brooks, chairman of North Down UUP Association has not only resigned but joined the DUP.  Another blow to Sir Reg, and yet further evidence that the tide is swinging in favour of Lady Hermon.

I can’t see her swinging to the same side as Mr. Brooks, so either she’ll stand as an independent in the next election, or be joining the Alliance Party which has a strong base in North Down (Alliance EU candidate Ian Parsley is Deputy Mayor there)

Jim Nicholson must be fuming, but then again, he’s getting what he asked for…

Vote for Change!