I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was led astray by myself. I shall direct myself to the eventual subject of tonight's Adjournment debate—namely, the admission and charging policy for statutory residential homes in Northern Ireland. That will not prevent me on another occasion from returning to the interesting subject that the hon. Gentleman was kind enough to raise earlier.

The hon. Gentleman has taken the opportunity to add to some suggestions that he made earlier this year about the way charging and admission policy in the Province in old people's homes works against the interests of certain well-defined sectors of the community. He gave an interesting radio interview this morning on the issue that occasioned this debate. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving that interview, as he has enabled me to be better prepared than otherwise I would have been to answer the debate.

I must set the hon. Gentleman's suggestions in the overall context in the Province of the expenditure that we make every year in providing places for old people in residential homes. The cost of providing such a place in Northern Ireland is about £100 a week. That is broadly similar to the cost of similar provision on this side of the water. The total annual cost of running residential homes in the Province is about £16 million. Our social welfare system was introduced in 1948 and it has never been said that the costs should be met only by the State and not by contributions from residents. We receive about £4 million in charges that are met by those who are paying for their residence in the homes.

If we accept that the charges should be waived entirely—I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is not arguing that that should be done—we must accept that the level of provision in the Province must be greatly reduced. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman shares the pleasure that I derive from the fact that over the past eight years the number of places in old people's homes in Northern Ireland has increased by about 50 per cent.—that is, by about 1,100 places. That represents a major improvement. It is a fine achievement. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree with that.

The economic cost of providing a place in these homes may be about £100 a week, but the majority of residents pay substantially less than that. The average charge throughout the Province is about £25 a week, About half the residents pay the statutory minimum. That is a uniform sum that is applied throughout the United Kingdom of about four-fifths of an old person's pension. The remainder goes to the individual residents so that they may have some money of their own. It is sometimes referred to as pocket money. I do not like that term. It is money of their own that they may spend as they want. We should not think of it as pocket money.

A few facts and figures may help us to examine the hon. Gentleman's very well presented and well argued case rather more closely. About 10 per cent. of the residents in these homes pay the full standard charge. As I have said, about half pay the statutory minimum charge. It is probably among the remaining 40 per cent., who pay on a sliding scale between the statutory minimum and maximum, that some of the problems to which the hon. Gentleman drew attention occur.

As I understand it, the hon. Gentleman is particularly concerned about the method of determining the charges to be met by residents, especially when it concerns occupation of a house which the resident owned prior to entering the home. In the Province, as here, most people tend to enter these homes permanently or for fairly long stays. If they have previously lived in a house of their own, they must vacate it on entering an old persons' home.

As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, the method of computing a person's income in this situation is very similar to the manner in which it would be assessed under the supplementary benefit scheme which is standard for the whole of the United Kingdom. The situation in Northern Ireland is exactly the same as that which obtains in England, Scotland and Wales. There is nothing peculiar about the system which operates in the Province.

There will, of course, be cases in which individual residents realise when they enter the home that they will spend the rest of their lives there. This does not apply to all of them, as some old peoples' homes provide a valuable short-stay respite, perhaps for a year or so, while domestic problems are sorted out by individual pensioners' families. Nevertheless, the majority tend to go into the home for the rest of their lives. When they do so, many of them decide to realise the value of their property and to help to meet the weekly charge from the interest received on the proceeds of the sale.

I put it to the hon. Gentleman that in Northern Ireland, as on this side of the water, when people decide to sell their houses to produce that kind of income, this is very little different in true logic from the situation in which a person moving into the home of a son or daughter or other relative decides by exactly the same token to sell a house and invest the proceeds in order to help the son or daughter who, after all, has accepted responsibility for the care and well-being of the old person. It is a theoretical argument, but I think that in true logic there is little difference between the two situations.