NI secretary rules out prospect of early Assembly election

Secretary of State Brandon Lewis appears to have ruled out the prospect of an early Assembly election.

Northern Ireland is due to go to the polls on 5 May, but there had been calls to bring the date forward following the collapse of the power-sharing Executive.

The DUP's Paul Givan resigned as First Minister last week, in a move which also removed the Sinn Féin deputy First Minister from office.

Brandon Lewis said "it is right" that the election takes place on the scheduled date, adding that it is close to the start of the formal election period already.

"The Assembly under the new rules can continue to function, it's right we allow MLAs time and space to pass legislation, I'll be working to support the parties to do that and then we can have an election on 5 May," the secretary of state said.

Meanwhile the Northern Ireland Office minister, Conor Burns, has defended the "silence" of Boris Johnson last Thursday when Mr Givan resigned.

He was responding to a question from DUP MP Ian Paisley at the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.

Mr Burns said the Prime Minister had been "heavily involved".

He said: "The Prime Minister takes a genuinely deep interest in this ... I would hope that the fact that he asked me, one of his closest friends in the House of Commons, to serve in the Northern Ireland Office, you could take as a declaration of his interest and commitment to Northern Ireland.

"I don't want to diminish what is going on but I'm not sure at the moment what a prime ministerial intervention would be seeking to achieve.

"We have been very clear we would like your party to put the First Minister back in ... ministers are still in place, business is still being conducted, the Assembly is still sitting, legislation can still be passed.

"The only thing that cannot happen is those new initiatives which would require the sign-off of the Executive.

"We don't want to overdramatise what is going on, we are quite close to the period of dissolution anyway for a scheduled election, which is only weeks away, but I can assure you the Prime Minister is taking a very keen interest in this."