MOORS murderer Ian Brady has complained he does not get as much pocket money as other patients at his top-security  hospital.

The man who murdered five youngsters is currently in Ashworth Hospital, Merseyside, where he says he gets only £25 a week, while others - who he calls `tramps and malingerers' - get £100.

As he is being held as a `prison transfer', Brady, 70, is entitled to £1,300 of taxpayers' cash a year, but less than the amount for full-time patients.

In an eight-page letter to his solicitor and his local MP George Howarth, Brady complains about his payment, rails against New Labour and complains people do not feel safe walking the streets.

Brady writes: "Perhaps more embarrassing to prudently financial New Labour are the ranks of tramps and malingerers who have escaped into Ashworth to avoid working for a living, demanding and receiving full board and full benefits of £100 per week pocket money for life (we prison transfers receive only £25, being regarded as 'patients' only for restrictions)."

Boasting he is `in the top five per cent of the UK population' for intelligence, he complains at what he sees is his harsh treatment at Ashworth.

"Cataracts I've had for 10 years are untreated, as my  visiting an outside hospital would again draw unwanted attention.

"Quality  background: Haven't exercised in the open air since 1975; stopped all social visits since 1998 when Ashworth became less than a prison; confined to ward for past 23 years; force-fed since 1999. I - a 70-year-old tube-fed skeleton - am the sole high-profile prisoner Ashworth holds to exploit as a demonising agent.

"In like fashion, New Labour exploits the threat of a few fertiliser bombs to panic and heard a bovine generation.

"As a child I watched German planes daily/nightly bomb Glasgow back to full employment; New Labour has accomplished more permanent diminution of human/civil liberties than WW2 bombs and rockets.

"New Labour's disregard for human/civil rights is now a general contagion, with each infliction coated in a syrup of entirely cosmetic `safeguards'."

Brady criticises the `surveillance society' which `rightly  has people complaining they can't safely walk the streets'.

He went on hunger strike in 2001 and is being kept alive by forced feeding through a nasal-tube, but he wants to leave Ashworth and go to a prison - his stated aim being to kill himself.

His case is currently before a Mental Health Review Tribunal.

Brady was jailed for life, alongside Myra Hindley, in 1966 for murdering Pauline Reade, 16, John Kilbride, 12, Keith Bennett, 12, Lesley Ann Downey, 10, and Edward Evans, 17.

The victims were buried on Saddleworth Moor. Hindley died in 2002.