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Mr. Fallon : The hon. Gentleman seems to suggest that East Sussex council relied solely on the Government's forecast of 4 to 4.5 per cent. inflation this year. I hope that he is not implying that his county treasurer took no notice of the announced increase in education standard spending of 7.2 per cent. last November.
Mr. Bellotti : I have known our county treasurer for many years, and I can say that he is one of the most excellent, professional county treasurers in the country. I have great respect for his professional capabilities. Each year in his post he has found that the Government, through their settlements to local authorities and by their legislation, have made his job increasingly difficult--they have forced local authorities to spend more money in certain areas. I am surprised if the Minister is imputing any lack of professionalism to East Sussex. Perhaps I should not be surprised, since the Minister said tonight-- Hansard will bear me out--that the "great bulk" of this expense is being met by the Government. The local government management board has calculated that the sum provided by the Government is £300 million short.
I have examined the figures and, in the context of the local authorities that I know well, that figure is not far off the mark. It is certainly a couple of million pounds in East Sussex. Another local authority that I know extremely well, because I recently looked at its accounts and spoke about them in the House, is the London borough of Sutton. It will receive help of only £192,000. Judging by the Sutton accounts that I looked at only a week or so ago, that borough could find itself short of upwards of £1 million as a result of the announcement.
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Many of the local authorities that are spending up to the maximum of their SSA have precious little in balances left and have in their contingency funds sufficient to meet only a reasonable increase. Government rules will force those authorities to cut services. It is reported that the Secretary of State for Education and Science has said that the release of £60 million--it is only £56 million--from Government reserves would enable education authorities to meet the 7.8 per cent. real terms rise. Surely the Government recognise that the £56 million will not meet the whole cost. If they do, they are even more incapable than I thought they were, because the sums do not add up.If local education authorities are unable to meet the cost, up to 12,500 teaching posts will have to be cut. The Minister may say that there is no need for such cuts, but if he does and also places a cap on local authority expenditure, he will be inconsistent. Perhaps the Minister would suggest that other local government services could be cut. Perhaps social services and care for the elderly could be cut to pay for the teachers. Perhaps the Minister would like to shut all the libraries in the country. A cut in councils' road building programmes might be suggested. Such cuts could be the effect of the sums that the Government are providing.
The Government cannot have it both ways. Hansard will show that the Minister said that there are two other ways in which local authorities might meet the cost. One was through efficiency savings and the other was through surplus places. Either the Minister meets the full cost--he nodded a few moments ago to show that he would--or he secretly accepts that not enough money is to be provided for education authorities and he expects cuts in services.
Year after year in recent times, all local authorities have sought efficiency savings because that is the only way that they have any chance whatever to continue to provide services. That is because the Government continue to reduce funding while increasing legislation. To save on surplus places, education authorities would have to close whole schools. In East Sussex, the Audit Commission once suggested that a secondary school should be shut in the north of the county. The cost of shutting it was greater than that of keeping it open, because we would have had to bus 500 children at least 15 miles either way to the nearest school. The savings were merely paper figures and not real cash.
The Minister's arguments do not bear any examination. The Government's complacency on the issue makes it clear that once again they are attacking local government and making more and more difficult the delivery of the important education service. They have lost all credibility with the people who know anything about these matters.
As I listened to the Minister, I thought, "Has he ever been to a council meeting? Has he ever with an open mind discussed anything with a local councillor of any party? Has he ever had experience of looking at budgets of local authorities?" Either he has not, and he should, or he has and this is a deliberate confidence trick on those who have to balance the budgets of our local authorities. The people out there are rumbling the Government. Proposals that are totally inadequate to meet the needs of the situation show that the Government's time is running out. It will be either more cuts in local authority spending or it will be teachers' pay. It is not the Government who are paying, for the Government's £56 million is but 20 or 25 per cent. of the real cost. The Minister knows that, and it is a disgrace that he has presented us with these figures.
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11.25 pmMr. Bob Dunn (Dartford) : I shall speak for only a few minutes, being mindful of the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen).
I was interested in the remarks of the hon. Member--the hereditary Member-- for Durham, North-West (Ms. Armstrong). They bore no relation, however, to what the Government are seeking to do and its implications. I found it frightening that a serious debate should attract the hyperbole and the rhetoric that the Butlin
representative--the hon. Lady--insisted on giving us.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) is not in the Chamber. He could perhaps have used the opportunity to provide another example of further endorsement of the Government's education reforms. The only hope that I have of him is that, when he finally finishes turning, his face will end up at the front. In the unlikely event of that, perhaps we shall hear even more from the hon. Member for Durham, North-West.
It is strange that we are talking about an increase of 7.8 per cent. in such negative terms. The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Bellotti) made only one positive remark when he said that he welcomed it. He then proceeded to be wholly negative, in the way that one would expect from a newcomer to the House who will remain here for such a short time.
Anyone who congratulates the Government on an above-average increase will surely have to explain to the electorate that the policies of the Labour party would effectively, as a result of taxation structure, immediately wipe out the benefit of an above-average increase in teachers' pay. I noted that the hon. Member for Durham, North-West did not refer to the taxation policies of her party.
As more and more schools become grant-maintained, there must ultimately be savings to be made as the bureaucracy of the local education authority is reduced. In my constituency, four grammar schools are grant-maintained. Given their new status, they will call less and less upon the services provided by Kent county council. The obvious response of Opposition Members is, "We'll have none of that. We shall close everything down and control everything in a comprehensive structure." I think that there will be argument in favour of the Government taking further action in terms of standard spending assessment methodology and the high cost of attracting and retaining teachers in the south-east, including London. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will comment on that. My view is that ultimately we should move to local cost-centred pay bargaining at school level and away from national pay deals.
My hon. Friend the Minister made an important response in answer to the hon. Member for Eastbourne when he said that in November 1991 a 7.2 per cent. award was made for the rate support grant settlement for 1992-93. I remember that during my time at the Department of Education and Science I was reminded on many occasions that teachers' pay accounts for only about half education expenditure. Consequently, there must be room for savings elsewhere.
I have much sympathy for those who work in local eudcation authorities. Indeed, my wife is one such person. She is a member of the Kent education authority. It will be difficult, of course, for authorities to provide money in the way that has been outlined this evening, but that is the
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challenge of local government. Savings can be made. We must make clear the need to find the best value for best services within the remit of the services, whether they are provided by the LEA or by private agencies.I warmly welcome the steps that the Government have taken. I warmly welcome also the enthusiastic endorsement of the increase in pay. I know that teachers in my constituency will welcome the increase, as so many of them will benefit from it. Bearing in mind the strictures of the Opposition, I confirm my total support for the Government's actions.
11.29 pm
Mrs. Llin Golding (Newcastle-under-Lyme) : I speak for the children of Staffordshire, and, in particular, for the children of my constituency.
For the third year running, Staffordshire has been given a below-average increase in standard spending assessment. It is third from the bottom of the league table of county councils. If Staffordshire had been given the national average SSA, we would be talking of increased expenditure rather than a cut in services. If it had been allowed the same SSA as Bedforshire, Berkshire, Hertfordshire, Isle of Wight, Oxfordshire, Essex, Surrey, East Sussex, Buckinghamshire, Kent--the county of the hon. Member for Dartford (Mr. Dunn)--Hampshire or West Sussex, we would be able to plan big improvements for the children of Staffordshire. All the counties that I have listed are at the top of the SSA list.
Instead, Staffordshire faces a cut of £7 million in our education budget, and will have to find a further £1.4 million as a result of this measure and the Government's decision not to fund the 7.5 per cent. teachers' pay rise in full. My constituents are angry about the way in which their children are being treated, and I am very angry about it too.
Sir Nicholas Bonsor (Upminster) : Will the hon. Lady give way?
Mrs. Golding : No, I will not. There is not much time.
The damage that will be done to our children's prospects is disproportionate to the short-term savings that Staffordshire is being forced to achieve. The teaching staff in our schools are already overstretched ; there are not enough resources for books and materials, and many buildings are badly in need of repair. Meanwhile, the Department of Education and Science tips out glossy pamphlets by the ton. A teacher at Ravensmead school, Bignall End, in my constituency, gave me a two-foot pile of instruction pamphlets that she had been sent.
Sir Nicholas Bonsor : Will the hon. Lady give way?
That teacher asked me to give the pamphlets to the Minister, but they are so heavy that I have so far been unable to carry them into the building. She received them from the Department last year, and is now being told, "Throw them away--they are useless. We shall be sending you another lot this year."
What a waste of money. Why cannot all that money be spent where it is needed--on our children? We need to give our children a good education. Why cannot the children of Staffordshire be given a better deal by this uncaring
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Government? Why cannot they be given a fair share of the money that is allocated for education? Our children deserve a lot better than to be used as a political football by an uncaring Conservative Government.11.32 pm
Mr. Andrew Hargreaves (Birmingham, Hall Green) : I shall base my brief remarks on experience of my local authority and local education authority in Birmingham. I feel that it may have been specifically in regard to my local education authority that my hon. Friend the Minister referred to the scope for savings to be made.
Sir Nicholas Bonsor : As the 1974 candidate for
Newcastle-under-Lyme, I wish to place it on record--I hope that my hon. Friend will agree with me--that one of the great tragedies was the abolition of the grammar schools by the then Labour Administration. It was that abolition that deprived the children to whom the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mrs. Golding) referred of the choices and opportunities that they should have had--and would have had, if a Conservative Government had been in power at the time.
Mr. Hargreaves : I am grateful, as always, for my hon. Friend's intervention.
Let me return to the matter in hand. I want to take up a couple of points made by the hon. Member--the hereditary Member--for Durham, North-West (Ms. Armstrong). She said that a large number of schools became grant-maintained as a result of the threat of closure. As a Member representing a constituency which has its own extremely successful grant-maintained school, Baverstock, and which has two, if not three, further schools which may be thinking of grant-maintained status--all because they are oversubscribed and because the local education authority will not provide the necessary funds for parents who wish to send their children to them or for facilities for the children--may I point out to the hon. Member for Durham, North-West that she has not got her facts right? In my experience and that of the pupils of south Birmingham, grant-maintained schools have been successful and they were not faced with closure. Quite the reverse : they were the most successful schools in the area.
As to the scope for savings, about which the hon. Lady seemed to be a little sketchy, Birmingham local education authority has been written up in all the newspapers, local and national, as admitting that it did not spend some £60 million of the amount that the Department allowed it to spend on education. Instead, it spent the money elsewhere. It has admitted to newspapers, and to anybody else who asks, that the salaries of other people --not teachers--have come out of that budget.
When the Minister rightly remarked that there is substantial scope in some cases for savings to be made by local education authorities--for example, from surplus places, on which Birmingham is one of the worst offenders--he was within his rights in pointing that out to the House. Although there may be other areas where that does not happen, such as those referred to by the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mrs. Golding), I hope that she and they will recognise that in Birmingham it is flagrantly the case.
The House should bear in mind that the Minister is not inventing an example. He has a classic case, with Birmingham being the largest local authority and
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therefore having the largest SSA and the largest education budget, which it has not spent correctly. Therefore, the House should support my hon. Friend's measure.11.36 pm
Mr. Harry Barnes (Derbyshire, North-East) : The two evils of the poll tax were the flat rate system and the standard spending assessment. The standard spending assessment will still be with us, even under the move by the Government towards a council tax, and will be altered only when there is a change of Government. The standard spending assessment needs to be radically adjusted so that areas that are deprived will begin to have moneys spent on them. Without extra money from central Government grants to local government, there could be a dramatic redistribution just by altering the arrangements for the standard spending assessment itself.
We have heard of counties which have been badly affected by the standard spending assessment. I am from Derbyshire, at the bottom of the league when comparing grant-related expenditure assessment in 1989-90 and when comparing standard spending assessment in 1992-93. As regards the increase in the amount, some authorities have got almost twice as much.
Furthermore, for standard spending assessment, North East Derbyshire district council, which covers the bulk of my constituency, is second from the bottom of all district councils in England and Wales. It is next only to East Dorset, being 335th out of 336. Someone has to be at the bottom of the league table, but there should be justification for it and there should not be massive disparities between areas, for instance, in SSA per poll tax payer.
Several hon. Members have made the point that, if there is something wrong with the standard spending assessments, it is multiplied by the development that we are considering now. Extra money is welcome, but it is especially welcome in areas that have favourable SSAs. Other areas, such as Derbyshire, will be at a very considerable disadvantage.
A deputation from North-East Derbyshire met one of the Environment Ministers to discuss district council SSAs. I do not know whether the meeting did much good. Afterwards we had an SSA improvement of a mere £3,000, but we lost £18,000 in terms of revenue support grant. In other words, after the representations we were worse off. That has happened despite the fact that we know very fully the factors that are involved in building up SSAs. We know that it is a fiddled system, which hits areas such as north-east Derbyshire in an unbelievable way.
Many of the same principles come into operation with regard to Derbyshire as a whole. Having targeted some of the London authorities, the Government look to Derbyshire as one of the favourite areas for targeting. However, despite a very favourable press in the south of Derbyshire, of which the Government can make use, targeting has never worked politically--it has never worked at elections. What is needed is a massive overhaul of the standard spending assessment. The deputation from North East Derbyshire did not thump the table, but it presented its case firmly. Although it was received respectfully, it was not given anything.
I hope that for Derbyshire county council we shall have similar arrangements for discussion of the general standard spending assessment, and not just of the situation
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with regard to education--although that is part of the total package. I wrote to the Secretary of State for the Environment and today or yesterday, received a reply that merely defended the Department's position. The reply rejected the case for a deputation to put these points forward. Authorities should be enabled to present their cases, and should be listened to. In time, that would provide an opportunity for adjustment of these factors. Derbyshire county council wishes to be on the list. It needs a chance to be heard. This must be done fairly quickly, as after 9 April it will be with different Ministers that we shall want to discuss these matters, and there will be a much more favourable environment.11.43 pm
Mr. Alistair Burt (Bury, North) : I am grateful for the opportunity to make three brief points towards the end of this debate. I shall start by declaring an interest : I am one of the three parliamentary representatives of the Assistant Masters and Mistresses Association. I echo the welcome of my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Mr. Dunn) and of the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Bellotti) for the very basis of this order, which, we should not forget, implements the pay increase awarded to teachers through the pay review body. For a number of years, we have been told that one of the problems for teachers is not just pay but the general morale of the profession. The pay review body is one of the measures that the Government introduced for the purpose of improving morale.
It should be appreciated that the increases that the review body has recommended have been implemented in full. That is a good start, although I agree that we should like to see some catching up achieved over the years. Our schools need teachers of the very highest quality. We have many good teachers. We want to see them well rewarded, and we want others to be brought into the profession and to adhere to the very highest standards.
Secondly, amid all the doom and gloom spoken about schools, I yesterday visited Our Lady of Lourdes primary school in my constituency--
Mr. James Pawsey (Rugby and Kenilworth) : A good Catholic school.
Mr. Burt : Indeed, it is a very good Catholic school. I spent an excellent morning there and had an enjoyable time with staff and pupils. Of course difficulties were discussed, but the general professional approach of the school belied so many of the doom and gloom comments made about it. The teachers were doing their best and doing well. The Minister knows of my concern that, although teachers generally welcome many of our reforms, the pace of reform is sometimes too fast and sometimes obscures the best of what we are doing.
Problems of finance in my constituency have sometimes been exacerbated and cannot be separated from the general financial performance of the local authority. Yes, local authority spending on education in my constituency is being affected and the formula may take some of the blame, but my authority has had opportunities to make representations about the formula. It has not made full use of those representations, and I am sorry about that. Where savings can be made and efficiency improved, all authorities have a duty to attempt that. I agree that the formula could be further examined. It is kept under
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constant review, but my authority is one of those subject to the mysteries of the formula which never seems to do it any favours. The difference in approach between the Conservative authority which used to look after Bury and the current Labour authority is that the Conservative party did its best to live within its budget guidelines, but the Labour authority appears not to do so. The consequence has been extra pressure on schools, a pressure which they ill deserve. This is a good pay award. I appreciate the Government's efforts to increase grant spending to assist authorities to pay for it, but we should not separate the performance of local authorities and the effects that their adherence to budgets might have on schools. That should also be taken into account.11.46 pm
Mr. William O'Brien (Normanton) : The debate has centred on the provision of education, but the report refers to local government finance in England so the environment teams--those from the Government and the Opposition--have an interest in it. We are paired from the discussions on local government in Committee, and I am sure that the discussions on education match those that we have heard in the Committee debating the Local Government Bill.
We want teachers to be properly paid for their work and the settlement brings some reward, to which teachers are entitled. However, to include only the award in the additional grant does not solve the problem facing local government, and in particular the education authorities. The fear of the loss of teachers is most likely because the overall budget for local authorities has been limited to a mere 4.8 per cent. above current year spending. I make that point because, when the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science, the hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Fallon), referred to the 7.2 per cent. increase in expenditure, I wondered whether he was referring to the Government's estimate of what the expenditure in the coming year will be, or to actual expenditure. There is a difference, and that difference means that local authorities are facing financial hardship because of the limit that has been placed on expenditure above the current year's expenditure. Even taking into account the top-up measure, there is still a shortfall of about £300 million if the settlement awarded is to be implemented without problems and tears. Such a shortfall means that the equivalent of 12,500 teaching jobs could go. The extra £60 million proposed by the Government covers only 0.6 per cent. of the overall7.8 per cent. increase in teachers' pay. Without a proper and significant review of the full cost of teachers' salaries, £15,500 classroom jobs will go.
The Minister referred to the letter sent by the chief education officer for North Yorkshire county council in which he said that there would be no loss of jobs in North Yorkshire. Could the chief of police in North Yorkshire write the same letter? If resources are being transferred from one head of expenditure in the county budget to another, one can understand how the Minster could make such comments. However, if he analyses the budget of
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North Yorkshire, he will find that the police are suffering. That matter should be considered by people in North Yorkshire. Even with the award, there will be a loss of more than 1,400 teachers in the Yorkshire and Humberside region. We must therefore consider the level of the award. Councillor Jeremy Beecham, the chairman of the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, sent a letter to the Prime Minister on 6 February pointing out the need for the award made to schoolteachers to be fully funded through the grant system. The £60 million does not meet the demands that will be made by LEAs on the resources of local authorities.The Secretary of State has said more than once that he intends to use the capping powers on local authority budgets. That procedure now applies to local authorities throughout the country. The fact that local authorities have to cap themselves must be addressed when we consider local education budgets. It may be correct that each local authority has to decide its own service priorities, as the Secretary of State tells local authorities. However, that freedom is severely constrained partly by the statutory requirements to provide a range of services and partly, and more so, by the limits set on total expenditure for local authorities--the capping procedure.
Local authorities have carried out a self-disciplined capping for the past two or three years, but there are limits to what they can do. My authority of Wakefield, on which I used to serve, has had to reduce its budget for education by £1 million this year to meet the capping criteria. It is misleading to say that the Government are funding the pay award in full. Local authorities are having to make cuts in other areas, and in education, to meet the capping limits which can be set by the Secretary of State.
When the procedure involves a reduction in services, it is often the non- mandatory services that are cut first. The services most likely to be cut in education are the youth service, adult education and library services. They are the first to go before the schools sector is exposed to the economies.
After such cutting is exhausted, the maintenance and upgrading of schools must be considered by the Government. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key), will comment on the way in which the local authorities face hardship and problems because of the capping procedure and because of the foolishness of the way in which the poll tax procedure still applies in many areas of local authority work. The anomalies in the poll tax procedure also mean that local authorities are having difficulties in collecting their poll tax payments.
I appeal to the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment to examine the position constructively and to report to the Secretary of State the real hardship that is being created in local authorities by the lack of funding to meet the pay award.
11.54 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Robert Key) : It is far too long since I took part in an education debate. As one of their most regular attenders, I have missed them very much. I am delighted to be able to speak for the Department of the Environment in the three or so minutes that the Opposition have left me.
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I thank all those who have taken part in the debate and ask them to forgive me, because I will not have time properly to address all the anxieties that they have raised. I begin by saying that education debates have not changed. There is the absurd assumption that Conservative Members wish to denigrate teachers and not use their services. What a lot of silly twaddle, as ever. There should be no doubt that not only do I have a high regard for our teachers and wish to see them properly rewarded but I believe in teachers in the state system, to the extent that all my children have been educated at state schools.Mr. Barry Field (Isle of Wight) : May I remind my hon. Friend of the excellent exchange that I had with the Secretary of State for the Environment on standard spending assessments and the revenue support grant the other day in the House? Following that, this large advertisement appeared in our local newspaper, from which I shall quote, Mr. Deputy Speaker, entitled "Can balances be raided?" My hon. Friend the Minister might recall that I had a public meeting on the island to ask why the Liberal Democrats were not taking from the balances. Will my hon. Friend look at the Local Government Act 1986 on prohibition of political publicity? It seems to me that the advertisement offends against that Act. I hope that I may have the support of the Department of the Environment in taking on the Liberal Democrats on this matter. It is £1,250-worth of advertising for political propaganda.
Mr. Key : I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Not only will I read the relevant Act but I will read the advertisement if he will send it to me. I will consider it carefully within my Department.
We have heard a lot about the need for extra money for funding education in general, and the teachers' pay award in particular. We have heard how inadequate are both the settlement in general and the additional grant in particular. Unwelcome though it may be to some hon. Members, we ought to apply a measure of reality to those claims.
Since 1990, the total provision for local authority spending has increased by over 27 per cent. Within that total, the level of financial support distributed to authorities by central Government has risen by over 43 per cent. This year's settlement represents a 7.1 per cent.
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increase on last year's figure--well ahead of inflation. In addition, we have recognised the major extra burden that authorities face this year in preparing for the council tax, by providing specific grant totalling £86 million towards those costs, which is outside and additional to aggregate external finance.So the major new burden facing authorities in 1992-93 need not eat into the general increase that they have received. Now we have this further additional grant for the teachers' pay award. But still Opposition Members ask for more. If yet more resources were devoted to education, we would still need to be clear about where they should be found. Do those who call for more believe that less should be devoted to other services? If so, which ones? Tonight we have the education lobby of the Labour party with us. Have those Members consulted the health lobby, the overseas development lobby, the housing lobby? Have they consulted the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith)? Or has he ruled himself out in Labour's game?
Or should the resources available to local authorities be increased by a further £2 billion, as local authority associations and some Opposition Members suggest? Opposition Members have offered no explanation of where the extra £2 billion is to come from. Merely to call for extra resources without identifying where they will come from is, to say the least, irresponsible.
The settlement provided for a 7.1 per cent. increase in education standard spending. The grant that we are debating is additional to that. If we accept that at 7.8 per cent., the pay award is greater than anticipated in formulating the settlement, is it true that authorities are having to find resources this year to fund the overhang from the 1991-92 pay award, I ask myself?
We should remember that teachers' pay accounts for more than half of local authority spending on education. Other costs to education-- It being one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on the motion, Mr. Deputy Speaker-- put the Question, pursuant to Standing Order No. 14 (Exempted business).
Question agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Additional Grant Report (England) 1992-93 (House of Commons Paper No. 264), a copy of which was laid before this House on 17th February, be approved.
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Army Bill [Money]
Queen's Recommendation having been signified--
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Army Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of money so provided under any other enactment.-- [Mr. Nicholas Baker.]
11.58 pm
Mr. Rupert Allason (Torbay) : The money resolution concerns section 2 of the Armed Forces Act 1966, in relation to the Ulster Defence Regiment. It concerns extra expenditure for the Army in Northern Ireland and that is the topic on which I propose to address the House briefly in the minutes available to me.
I realise that it is late, and I do not wish to detain the House for long ; however, it is important that people realise that the key to effective security is intelligence. In recent days, we have had an eloquent example of how the effective exploitation of intelligence can prevent terrorist incidents, and how additional money put into the exploitation of intelligence can be used to the advantage of the military authorities.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean) : Order. I realise that the hon. Gentleman is still on his preamble, but I must remind him that the money resolution is very narrow, and directly concerns expenditure related to the Ulster Defence Regiment. It would not be in order to introduce wider issues about intelligence.
Mr. Allason : I am grateful for the Chair's guidance. I propose to address the House on the 1966 Act in relation to the Ulster Defence Regiment, and to additional funds for the payment, support, welfare and, if necessary, resettlement and long-term security provision for intelligence sources. That goes to the heart of the money resolution.
How is one to acquire important intelligence in the Province? Certainly, technical surveillance has a role, as do radio and telephone intercepts. There is limited scope for clandestine surveillance. The real key, where money is involved, is in relation to agents.
I wish to draw the attention of the House to a recent case, that of Brian Nelson--a soldier who spent six years in the Black Watch, subsequently became entangled with the Ulster Defence Association and then moved to Germany. He was persuaded to return to Northern Ireland by the Army. In the years that followed, he was paid the princely sum of approximately £200 a week to supply information to the security authorities.
I hold no brief for Brian Nelson. I do not believe that he was an angel, although--in his defence--it was said at the time that he saved the lives of about 200 people. I am not going to stray from the--
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, again, but I am finding it difficult to relate what he is saying to the narrow money order before the House.
Mr. Allason : The money resolution relates to the provision of money to the Ulster Defence Regiment, which is the subject that I am tackling.
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Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. It is not quite that. It only relates to the amalgamation to which the Bill applies.
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