Underpaid: Ian Brady, now 70, complains he earns just £25 a week compared to other inmates' £100

Ian Brady has complained he does not get paid as much allowance as other patients at the top-security hospital where he is held.

The Moors murderer said that while he receives £25 a week, some patients at Ashworth Hospital in Merseyside get up to £100 a week in benefits.

His complaint is made in an eight-page letter to his solicitor and his local MP, Labour's George Howarth.

Brady, 70, grumbles that the public do not feel safe on the streets and whinges about the state of modern Britain and the failings of 'New Labour'.

He added: 'But 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.'

Guidelines say patients in psychiatric units can receive benefit payments, while those transferred from prisons receive much less.

Home: Ashworth Hospital in Merseyside

Because he is held as a prison transfer, Brady is entitled to up to £1,300 of taxpayers' cash each year as an allowance.

He is allowed to spend the money on newspapers, confectionery, cigarettes and other sundries.

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

He was admitted to Ashworth in 1985 but is keen to return to a conventional prison.

Victims: Keith Bennett 12, left, Lesley Ann Downey, ten, and John Kilbride, 12

In 2001, he began a hunger strike in an attempt to commit suicide but is kept alive by being force-fed through a nasal tube.

In his letter he complains about his treatment at the hospital. He said: 'Cataracts I've had for ten 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.

Murdered: Edward Evans, 17, and Pauline Reade, 16

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

'New Labour has accomplished more permanent diminution of human/civil liberties than WW2 bombs and rockets ever achieved.

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

Brady has instructed lawyers to appeal to a Mental Health Review Tribunal to allow him to be transferred to a conventional jail.

Saddleworth Moor: Police find Miss Reade's body on the infamous landscape