Councillor Ben Duncan would do well to stop misleading the residents of Brighton and Hove over the introduction of the new leader and cabinet system at Brighton and Hove City Council (Letters, April 30). As he well knows, this decision was foisted on us by the Government as part of the recent Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act.

The Conservatives, along with all the other political parties on the council, opposed it tooth and nail and wanted to keep our system of multiparty committees. This has nothing to do with "a grubby deal" over allowances, as Coun Duncan alleges, but everything to do with the fact that we would be breaking the law if we didn't introduce it. Furthermore, all cabinet meetings and even individual cabinet member meetings will be held in public with opposition parties being able to take a full part. This is a much greater level of transparency and democracy than many other councils operate under.

Coun Duncan's other comments on local taxation make interesting reading and I would urge the residents of Brighton and Hove to take careful note.

While he is undoubtedly correct that Labour's more than doubling of council tax over the past ten years has hit pensioners on fixed incomes particularly hard, his call for it to be replaced by a land value tax or "garden tax"

would make matters considerably worse.

Research in Scotland, where the Greens are pushing to get this introduced, shows that areas where land values are high, e.g. Brighton and Hove, would be hit particularly hard by such a levy, with some residents paying up to three times the amount currently paid under the council tax system.

Far from the fair and equitable alternative that they would have you believe.

This sort of irresponsible and misleading talk is what we are coming to expect from the Green Party in Brighton and Hove. By contrast, we prefer to get on with the more important business of running this city, providing efficient value-for-money services that thousands of residents and visitors rely on every day.