Mr. Michael Howard:

To repeat what I already said, the effect of many of the allowances is to increase the earnings of those who do operational duties. If one looks at the structure of an infantry battalion serving overseas, it will contain a lot of infantry privates who will be paid an allowance for serving overseas. If one looks at a cash or prisoner escort, there will be a small number of senior people in charge and a much larger number of private soldiers. This is exactly what we would expect from the structure of the pay system we have.