Hillingdon Labour Leader calls out Tories for misleading claims

Hillingdon Tory claims over Labour Councillors voting against key issues within the borough are designed and intended to deliberately mislead residents, said Hillingdon Labour Leader Peter Curling.

A leaflet has started to be delivered to voters in Hillingdon from the local Conservatives claiming that Labour were not supportive of a number of issues that were brought up during the budget meeting that took place in February.

Due to Council procedures, the opposition group within a Council are not able to put forward their own budget, but can propose amendments to the budget that has been put forward by the controlling party.

The Labour Group suggested a number of amendments including providing the funding for additional police officers, give targeted funding for children’s centres, and create a number of staffing positions at the Council to focus on adult social care, anti-social behaviour, and homelessness.

The Conservative Councillors voted against these amendments, denying additional funding for children’s centres and addressing key concerns that residents have such as anti-social behaviour and adult social care. Once the amendment fell, the vote on the original budget was put to a vote, and the Labour group voted against as they believed that they could not support the entire budget package – there is no ability for Councillors to vote on specific budget points.

After seeing the misleading Tory leaflet, Labour Leader Cllr Peter Curling said:

“We voted against the Tory budget due to their cuts to social care and services that vulnerable residents depend on. The Tories could have accepted our amendment and addressed the difficulties residents face, but they chose to vote our amendment down and push ahead with their budget that makes cuts to services for vulnerable residents.”