§ Mr. Litterickasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what is his estimate of the total amount of money available for spending in Birmingham during the first 12 months of the operation of the inner city partnership policy.
§ Mr. FreesonFor 1978–79, the Birmingham partnership has been allocated an additional £2½ million urban programme for new projects and for 1977–79 £11 million from the £100 million inner cities construction package. These sums are additional to the much larger sums available through the main expenditure programmes of central and local government, underpinned by rate support grant, of which Birmingham's needs element for 1978–79 is estimated to be over £110 million.
Estimates of local authority expenditure for 1978–79 are not yet available. Information is not normally available on a district basis for county expenditure or direct spending by other Government Departments. However, discussions are 770W taking place to see how far we can identify the total public expenditure within the partnership areas, including that of Birmingham, and subsequently to monitor it.