COUNCILLOR Stuart Kelly's attempt to shift the blame for the cuts in Wirral Council's budget from the coalition government simply won't wash.

The responsibility for the £109m cuts which we have to make over the next three years lies squarely with the Tory/LibDem coalition. 57% of the £109m is due to reduced grants; 43% is due to increased costs from factors such as demographic change which the government has failed to fund.

To make matters worse, George Osborne recently announced further cuts to local government funding. For Wirral, we will have to find additional savings of between £13.5m and £24m during the period 2015 to 2018.

Councillor Kelly says that we should have charged recipients of Council Tax benefit 8.5% of their Council Tax bills. This would have required us to find an additional £1.39m of cuts.

Can Cllr Kelly please tell your readers which services or jobs he would have cut to achieve this?

Councillor Phil Davies, Leader of the Labour Group