The deep divisions among Ulster Unionists were evident in a debate on policing when members clashed on whether their leadership was to blame for the "disbandment" of the RUC.
Mr Neil Oliver said policing was in an awful state with senior officers leaving the force at a time when the North faced a continuing threat from the "Real IRA". The "rot" set in not with the Patten Report on policing, but when the UUP accepted the Belfast Agreement in 1998.
"Our party let the RUC down badly in its haste to sign the Agreement," he said. It had been "foolhardy in the extreme" to accept a document in which the planned changes to policing were not specified.
There were 8,000 serving or retired police officers in North Down and the Ards area. The vast majority believed the UUP had "betrayed" them and would never again vote for the party," he said.
North Down MP, Lady Sylvia Hermon, said it was "mischievous" to blame the UUP for policing changes. She paid tribute to the officers who died and were injured "to defend us from the scourge of terrorism".
She praised the SDLP for joining the Policing Board and criticised Sinn FΘin for "sitting on the sidelines whingeing away". She called for an end to the "obnoxious scheme" of 50-50 religious recruitment to the PSNI "Choosing an officer on account of his or her Catholic faith is demeaning to all good Catholic officers who are there rightly on merit. Positive discrimination is offensive and counter-productive. This party will not tolerate any form of discrimination."
Mr Mark Annette said the recruitment regulations kept Protestant youth out of the police. Mr Billy Tate urged support for the new force and hoped none of its members would be killed.
In the debate on women in politics, Mrs Daphne Trimble said while her party's record of female representation compared favourably to that of others, there was room for improvement. She criticised "the phenomenon that is the Women's Coalition".
"They don't get many votes and the don't speak for many people," she said. She was "totally fed up" with the Coalition giving the impression there were "no other women in politics".
In the education debate, Mr David Burnside MP worried that the Education Minister, Mr Martin McGuinness, would "in an old-fashioned, left-wing socialist way" destroy the North's "very fine education system". Mr Ken Robinson expressed concern that while 25 per cent of pupils performed very well, another 25 per cent left school barely literate.