That's all from Stormont for today.

Join us tomorrow morning at 10am for live coverage of the Assembly's Education Committee.

The bill is defeated on a cross-community vote.

97 Members voted, of which 58 voted aye [59.79%]

39 Nationalists voted, of which 0 voted AYE [0%]

50 Unionists voted, of which 50 voted aye [100%]

Eight others voted, of which eight voted aye [100%]

Speaker Mitchel McLaughlin calls for tellers and the voting process begins.

Mr Storey rejects claims made by Sinn Fein speakers regarding financial losses they had said would be suffered by groups including families with children, and adults, and children with disabilities.

"The supplementary payments scheme would have provided full protection for all current claimants in each of these groups," he says.

Social Development Minister Mervyn Storey rises to reply to the debate.

"There has been no contrived crisis," he says.

"Welfare will come to Northern Ireland, but it won't be this bill that will introduce it," the minister says.

Mr McCallister says the bill does not do enough to help people: "All the evidence we have points to early intervention, in dealing with welfare and economic inactivity".

"We will not help educational underachievement while we cut £2m of the community and voluntary sector when we cut early years," he says.

Education Minister John O'Dowd, making an intervention, says his department is spending somewhere in the region of £260m per annum on early-years interventions".

Independent MLA John McCallister says "being in government has to be about much more than the car and the photo-op".

"Being a minister should bring with it an enormous opportunity to change things and to improve the lives of our citizens, but it must also carry a huge weight of responsibility of being in government and having to make those tough, unpopular decisions sometimes" he says

Independent MLA Claire Sugden says she is frustrated that MLAs have "an opportunity to shape legislation that will affect people's lives on a day-to-day basis and that's all going to be threatened and undermined because of where we find ourselves this evening".

She likens the Assembly to a theatre, saying - "the audience, who are the people of Northern Ireland, are heckling us. In fact, they're not heckling us, they've left the auditorium because they don't care anymore because they're so frustrated with us.

"We are no further forward with welfare reform tonight as when we heard the first reading of this bill," she says.

Mrs Foster says that "because it is an enabling bill, its defeat would remove the power from this Assembly to improve welfare benefits for at least, I would say, two years".

"Dump this bill," she says, "and welfare recipients would be worse off, that is a fact".

She says Sinn Fein and the SDLP are "removing the only mechanism the Assembly has to improve welfare payments".

If the bill fails, she says, "£604m of cuts would have to be made to vital, frontline public services, the services that the most vulnerable in our community need and rely upon".

DUP Finance Minister Arlene Foster says it was after its Ard Fheis (the party's annual conference) that Sinn Fein decided to change its position on welfare reform.

"Whatever happened in Londonderry, Sinn Fein has reverted to type and walked away from the implementation of an agreement they signed up to, which begs the question, did they not understand what they signed on the 23 December 2014? " says Mrs Foster.

Mr McCrea talks about difficult decisions, citing the example of healthcare, the cost of which is increasing by 6% per annum, while "our income is increasing by 1%" a year.

"It is not possible, politically, to go and close hospitals or go and close other buildings," he says, "it is not possible to take decisions like that, unless you have cross-party support".

"The minute you take a tough decision, you get your head in your hands," he says.

Basil McCrea of NI21 says "I don't understand what has gone so badly wrong".

He says there is something "fundamentally amiss with our political process if after months of discussions we can't come to some form of agreed position".

Mr McCrea says Sinn Fein have talked repeatedly about their mandate and that the Conservatives have no mandate here.

"Mandates are all very well, but if you don't have any money, you have to go and talk to people in a particular way," he says, adding, "If Northern Ireland was self financing, we can do what we want. But where we get a subvention of £10bn out of £20bn that we spend, then you have to go and talk to people in a correct way".

Mr McNarry says the Assembly "continues to punish the very people that each of us seeks to protect".

He dismisses Sinn Fein suggestions of co-operation with the Scottish and Welsh governments, stating that those administrations have already adopted the welfare reforms.

David McNarry of Ukip says that if you ask people what they voted for in the general election they will says "it was not for a crash at Stormont".

He refers to the Executive as a "cowboy coalition".

"This Executive is proving itself to be a failed entity," Mr McNarry says.

Mr Agnew says his party cannot support the bill.

He describes it as "a bill that seeks to punish the poor to pay for the excesses of the rich"

Green Party MLA Steven Agnew says his persistent argument regarding welfare reform has been that "the figures do not add up", and his party remains opposed to the bill.

He says people have been told who is to be protected, but no-one has been told "who is to be worse off".

Mr Allister says Sinn Fein is "quite happy to bankrupt Northern Ireland, to be self-fulfilling in their affirmation that Northern Ireland is a failure. How better to do it, financially, than to bankrupt it".

"We are at a point of a reality check that shows the welfare reform project in freefall and now hurtling towards irredeemable budgetary crisis," he says.

He goes on: "Within days and weeks it is quite clear that the budgetary arrangements necessary to govern in this part of the United Kingdom are not going to be possible as a consequence of the killing of this bill tonight".

The TUV leader Jim Allister says "What we are witnessing here today is the fact that the chickens are coming home to roost in terms of the failure of mandatory coalition"

"For years it has been promised to us as the panacea of local government. That it is the essential and only workable system of government, and yet today it stands utterly exposed as that which reeks of failure".

Referring to a potential £2m a week of accruing welfare penalties, Mr O'Dowd says "that money is not being wasted".

"That £2m is going into the purses and the wallets of citizens out there," he says, "Carers are receiving that money, people with disabilities are receiving that money, the long-term sick are receiving that money and they're using it to survive on".

Mr O'Dowd says some MLAs who support welfare reform hide behind the statement, "we have to do it, we have to make the hard choices".

He says, "we have to make hard choices, but politics is always about options. You always have an option in politics and it's up to each individual member and party to make decisions about where they want to go".

He says if people support welfare reform "they have a duty to come out, front and centre and support it".