Dear Editor

Peter Black’s latest letter (June 25) makes a desperate attempt to pretend teacher redundancies across Swansea are not his Liberal Democrat Council’s responsibility despite him personally voting for the £5.6million cuts that caused them.

He starts by saying if I haven’t been invited to an MP Council briefing I should ask for one straight away. In fact, I did this immediately after my election on May 6^th and again on 21 June.

Then he tries to wriggle out of the fact that the Welsh Assembly gave Swansea an extra £5 million but the Lib Dems chose to cut education by £5.6million in order to prop up failing services and debts to computer companies. He falsely claims that I said no provision was made for teacher redundancies. What I said was that had the Lib Dems invested £2.2million in funding the teachers pay award they would have saved the £1.1million from redundancy payments so our children would still have more teachers.

All importantly the Labour-Plaid coalition in Cardiff is committed to increasing investment in education in Wales to that of England whereas the Liberal Democrat Tory coalition in Westminster is committed to cut education and money for Wales.

The Liberal Democrats have backed a Tory Budget which makes £4 of cuts for every £1 tax increase when during the election the Lib Dems campaigned for just £2.5 of cuts for every £1 of tax. No surprise that Peter Black recently commented of his Leader Nick Clegg“…Clegg does appear to have developed a certain blind spot when it comes to Wales in recent weeks…”  so it really is a case of the blind leading the blind.

 Geraint Davies MP