**Members of the assembly have voted in support of a motion to devolve policing and justice powers from Westminster to Northern Ireland.**As expected the Ulster Unionist Party did not support the move, however, the motion received the necessary cross-community consent to be passed.
Eighty eight of the assembly’s 108 members voted in favour of the move, while 17 MLAs did not support it.
Policing and justice powers will now be devolved on 12 April.
All 44 of the nationalist MLAs backed the vote, with 35 out of 52 unionists also supporting it.
Thirty-four out of 36 DUP MLAs voted in favour of devolving justice.
The only exceptions were the Speaker Willie Hay, who does not vote in this instance, and South Antrim MLA William McCrea who, according to the DUP, is attending a funeral.
Nine other members also voted in support of the powers being devolved.
UUP leader Sir Reg Empey said his party did not believe the time was right for policing and justice powers to be devolved to the assembly.
“We are a party for the devolution of justice, but it is the conditions to which we are coming,” he said.
"We have not had a single solitary discussion at leadership level of what we are going to do with policing and justice.
“It is a bit like doing your driving test without doing your driving lessons.”
Jeffrey Donaldson of the DUP accused the Ulster Unionists of not holding a “principled opposition” to the deal.
“I regret that a party that claims it is a liberal party, that it is a middle of the road party couldn’t see today that leadership is about taking steps forward, not hesitating,” he said.
“He who hesitates does not win.”
'Progress’
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the politics of progress had now replaced the politics of division in Northern Ireland.
"The completion of devolution, supported by all sections of the community in Northern Ireland, is the final end to decades of strife.
“It sends the most powerful message to those who would return to violence: that democracy and tolerance will prevail,” he said.
Disagreement on the timing of the devolution of the justice powers had threatened to collapse Northern Ireland’s power-sharing administration.
However, in February, Northern Ireland’s two main parties, the DUP and Sinn Fein, reached an agreement which, now the vote has been passed, will see a justice minister elected.
The Hillsborough Agreement allows for the first and deputy first ministers to identify a candidate who would command cross-community support in the assembly.
Alliance leader David Ford is favourite to take the post.
The two smaller parties in Northern Ireland’s mandatory coalition - the UUP and the SDLP - have insisted Alliance has no right to the post under the d’Hondt system for selecting ministers, which was agreed in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
The UUP also said they could not back the Hillsborough deal on policing and justice because it failed to address matters such as education, parading and “the dysfunctional nature of the current executive”.