Northern Secretary Shaun Woodward has been warned of deep unionist concern about the push to agree a bill of rights for Northern Ireland.
Unionist Assembly members voted in favour of a motion which claimed that they were excluded from the rights debate and were under-represented on the bill of rights forum established under the St Andrews Agreement.
That forum, chaired by international rights expert Chris Sidoti, has until March to agree a set of proposals for a bill specific to Northern Ireland's needs.
However, DUP member Michelle McIlveen asked if such a Bill was needed. She claimed that the Loyal Orders, evangelical churches, victims' groups and others within the unionist community had not been given "their own voice" at the forum.
She said some forum members were "communists, Marxists and socialists". "What we have is a human rights sector in Northern Ireland which has been hijacked over the years for political purposes by anti-unionists," she said.
"We have people who would not get elected but who are given equal and sometimes greater status than those who are mandated by the electorate."
SDLP members Alban Maginness and Alex Attwood criticised what they saw as the fingering of certain forum members by the DUP. Mr Maginness also argued that rights, by their universal nature, could not be partisan.
UUP deputy leader Danny Kennedy said members should concern themselves more with policy than with the names of individual forum members.
But he was concerned that the forum was considering widening the debate beyond the scope envisaged by the Belfast and St Andrews agreements.
"In this context it is worth noting that extensive socio-economic rights were never part of the mandate [to the Forum] given by the agreement," he argued.
Alliance's Stephen Farry argued unionists should not view the forum as a body sympathetic to nationalism and left-wing politics which is prepared to gang up on unionists.
The SDLP amendment was defeated and the substantive motion carried.
During ministerial questions, Education Minister Caitriona Ruane hinted that 14 could become the key age for pupils making crucial decisions about their future rather than the current 11. Members, especially on the unionist benches, pressed her as to when she would bring forward her proposals to replace the 11-plus schools transfer system.
The reform pledge came amid further calls for the Executive to produce legislation, with many members voicing concerns that the Assembly was seen by some merely as a talking shop.
Sinn Féin again criticised the latest three arson attacks on Orange Halls, bringing to 32 the total attacked since July.