I believe that it would have been right for the Secretary of State to face the fact that there is a Crisis of Expenditure in local government and that it is his duty to find out the details of the figures.

In an Expenditure Crisis, roads, houses and the science budget are among the first to be subject to abatement.

It is, of course, right and proper that, in order to ensure efficiency in public spending, such programmes are not regularly sacrificed as short-term expedients every time there is an Expenditure Crisis.

I will give just one example; I will not go into the Expenditure Crisis and so on.