---

Northern Ireland Assembly Members Bill [Lords]

I do not intend to detain the House for long. As far as the provisions on the regulation of expenses for the Assembly are concerned, there has never been any contention among the parties. In that respect, clause 1 is wholly unremarkable. In common with the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson), I would have preferred the provisions on double-jobbing to have gone a little further. It is a mark of the maturity of devolution in Northern Ireland, as well as in Wales and Scotland, that we can now countenance that. It is an issue that we should approach with rather greater confidence than we have apparently done. That said, the compromise we have achieved—compromise in the sense that everybody gets what nobody wants—is a workable staging post that should accelerate the withering on the vine of double-jobbing