In his Argus letter of February 3 Councillor Warren Morgan is playing an unpleasant game of pure political spin when he states that the Greens are choosing to cut children’s centres and when he speculates that we Greens might then change our proposals in order to ‘save’ the service as a vote winner.

This is utter nonsense and Coun Morgan knows it full well.

The Greens’ position is completely against cuts to children’s centres and their staffing and, because of cuts being rained down on local authorities by the coalition government, which make it simply impossible to fund all essential services, we are asking the city for a 5.9% council tax rise.

This Green position is not new and was, for example, reported in the Argus in early January.

There will only be cuts to children’s centres if the Greens’ preferred budget is voted down by Coun Morgan and his colleagues in the Labour and Conservative parties or if it comes to a referendum and is declined by the democratic will of the city.

Meanwhile, I note that Coun Morgan suggested in the same Argus article that, under Labour, the service might be redesigned using ‘parent-led options’, which is surely a euphemism for making children’s centre staff redundant and having parents run key parts of the service, instead of being supported by professional staff.

By any other name, that is significant cuts.

Is Coun Morgan prepared to deny now that Labour is looking at this?

Rob Shepherd, Green Party prospective council candidate for Preston Park