Leading Public Accounts Committee Member and SDLP MLA for East Derry, John Dallat, hascriticised the DUP First Minister's decision to try to have the major John Lewis planning application at Sprucefield decided by the Executive rather than the planning Minister Alex Attwood.

Mr Dallat said: "We are well used to the DUP trying to undermine ministerial colleagues from other Parties and grabbing more power for themselves - but this latest attack - trying to take planning powers off the Minister and into the Executive is a huge mistake and a massive error of judgement on the part of Peter Robinson.

"Firstly he is doing it for all the wrong reasons: Because he personally has taken such a battering recently, politically, over the 'flags' issue and his failure to show leadership, he is latching on to something populist to try to get himself back onside. He is also trying to twist the issue into a North v South tussle so that he can be seen to be fighting for the North. This is low-rent politics and we have a right to expect better from someone who holds his office.

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"Secondly, the move to take decisions properly made by individual Ministers into the Executive will lead to administrative chaos. If the Executive thinks it should take one planning decision - where does it stop? all planning decisions? all other ministerial determinations? The Executive's business is clogged up already from DUP vetoes. The proposed move on John Lewis could open a 'pandora's box' and bring Executive business to a complete halt. It will almost certainly create a legal quagmire, keeping the lawyers busy.

"The third reason this Robinson move is a big mistake is that it threatens the future of our political settlement and devolution itself. The DUP move on John Lewis is the latest in a series of moves to grab power, undermine the devolved institutions and show contempt for the spirit and the letter of the Good Friday Agreement. At Executive the DUP has also tried to stop the DARD Minister taking her decision on the location of DARD HQ; The DUP has also tried to wrestle control of the Education budget away from the Education Minister. Outside the Executive, the DUP has killed the Civic Forum, tried to nobble the Parades Commission and NI Housing Executive and put a stop to further North South cooperation. I believe that Nationalists are not going to put up with much more of this."

(CD)