Unallowable

Most people have no idea that the councillor's allowance exists, and most of those have no idea how much it is.

To the general public, being on the council is voluntary work in the evenings, by people with full-time day jobs. How little they realise.

Although the allowance is paid for attendance at as few as four meetings per year. Anything over and above that is, in that narrow sense, voluntary.

At the very least, it ought to be illegal for any council pay any of its staff less than it paid its members.

And at the very, very least, the Leader of the Labour Party ought not to appear on a platform with any member of the majority Group on any council that failed to adhere to that rule.

Such a member ought to be booed heartily by the crowd at, for example, the Durham Miners' Gala.

The basic allowance for a member of Durham County Council is £13,300.

The pay of at least a large minority of that authority's Teaching Assistants will soon be less than that.