Steve Aiken was suspended from the meeting after the vote

Steve Aiken said he “respects the outcome” of the decision to suspend him from the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The Ulster Unionist Party MP (MLA) has been suspended for two days.

He was accused of violating the “confidentiality” of the Assembly’s grievance procedure.

The standards committee recommended sanctioning Mr Aiken for disclosing a complaint he made against another MLA.

On Tuesday, MLAs supported a motion to bar him from attending business meetings next Monday and Tuesday.

Mr Aiken is an MLA for the South Antrim constituency and Deputy Speaker of the Stormont Assembly.

He was previously leader of the UUP between 2019 and 2021.

Mr. Aiken said he took the deliberations of the Standards and Privileges Committee seriously and respected its judgment.

“I will not state my case again, but members may, if they wish, read my arguments on the record,” he said.

He said when the inquest took place in 2021 he was dealing with a number of other issues.

“I freely admit that their investigation was not my top priority,” he said, citing his resignation as UUP leader, family illnesses and a threat to his team from loyalist paramilitaries as factors.

Mr Aiken criticized the fact that he was given only 45 minutes’ notice last week that he would face a sanction.

“A 45-minute announcement about something that happened 30 months ago would not be acceptable in any other forum and should not happen here,” he said.

Standards committee chairman Carál Ní Chuilín of Sinn Fein said Mr Aiken should have “led by example”.

The Alliance’s Paula Bradshaw called on Mr Aiken to consider his position as deputy speaker given questions raised about his conduct and involvement in the inquiry.

What was the complaint?

Sinn Féin MP Maolíosa McHugh lodged a complaint against Mr Aiken with the Assembly Standards Commissioner.

After Mr Aiken told a committee at Stormont in November 2020 that he had made a complaint about Mr McHugh to Commissioner Melissa McCullough.

Ms McCullough investigated, but Mr Aiken’s complaint was not upheld.

However, in her investigation of Mr McHugh’s complaint, the Commissioner found that Mr Aiken had breached the MLA Code of Conduct in relation to the disclosure of confidential information.

She also found he had violated the code by “not cooperating with my investigation.”

The commissioner’s report was considered by the Standards and Privileges Committee, made up of MLAs, in March 2022.

The behavior was described as an “egregious” breach of the code as Mr Aiken was a member of the Standards and Privileges Committee at the time.

The Committee suggested that their successors should consider an appropriate sanction for recommendation to the Assembly when the decentralized institutions return.