You report (December 12) that Labour councillors voted for a significant increase in the minimum council tax contribution that many of the poorest households in the city will need to pay. However, the political issues go much wider than the piece suggests.

Support for council tax relief has been devolved to councils by the coalition and progressively cut, alongside other massive cuts in Whitehall funding for council services.

Reluctantly, and in order to protect other services, Labour has proposed a level of relief which would still leave Brighton and Hove with one of the highest levels of relief in the country (and would affect many fewer than the 16,000 people the Greens claim, as this number includes elderly people whose relief would be unaffected).

But the Greens’ reaction has been to seek a huge increase in council tax, which would require the approval of a referendum.

We oppose this for the same reasons as last year, that councillors should take the decisions they are elected to make, and that the increase would be a massive blow to struggling households especially those just above the council tax relief threshold while raising no more than £4m to offset up to £26m in Government cuts, at a total cost of £1m.

The report does not make clear that the options before the council are Green options and that the funding for the Greens’ position is dependent on their securing a victory in a referendum – a vote than nobody believes an administration in its death-throes can win.

They have not explained how the shortfall will be funded if there is no council tax rise. The administration is taking a deliberate gamble with services for the most vulnerable in the city.

As we’ve come to expect from the Greens, it’s pure political grandstanding.

As an administration in waiting, Labour will not play politics with the services people depend on, or with the jobs of staff.

There is no more cynical game to play with the vulnerable than to make them the collateral damage of a policy that you know you cannot deliver.

Take away the spin and the manufactured outrage, and it’s just more evidence that the Greens are not fit to run this city.

Neil Schofield Labour and Co-Operative Candidate, Preston Park Ward