IN last week’s Bury Times, I was astounded to read a letter from a senior Labour councillor who has responsibility for looking after the council’s workforce, primarily making a personal attack on me rather than wanting to investigate the culture of bullying that has developed under a Labour-led administration within Bury Council.

What was more astounding was his completely rejection of the suggestions made by Bury Conservatives to clamp down on public sector “fat cats”.

Many of Bury Council’s staff earn far more than their private-sector counterparts and some are on a par with Government cabinet ministers!

This councillor is supposed to represent a party that is in favour of a more equitable society, so why he is going out of his way to defend the most highly paid staff in the public sector?

Why does he think it is equitable for the hard-working tax payer of Bury to directly pay the wages of Trade Union officials also on very generously high-paid salaries, particularly when the unions can easily afford to pay their own staff salaries?

He refers to the loss of 500 jobs in Bury Council. Maybe if the ruling Labour Party wanted to seriously address these imbalances, then many of the jobs could have been saved.

When the Labour Party first came to power in Bury in 2011, I recall them declaring that under their “competent management” and despite the expected reductions in Government funding, there would be no need for any redundancies at all!

Is it any wonder that people cannot trust Labour and their recent promise that a future Labour Government will balance the nation’s finances.

Iain Gartside

Leader of Bury Conservatives