COUNCILLOR Barry Mackenzie-Williams' knee-jerk reaction against good news for the City (You Say, Thursday, July 24) will end up costing local council taxpayers more.

He claims I cobbled together a few facts to show the poor level of performance of the city council to spin a story.

But he protests too much. He is the councillor in charge of the Housing Benefit service at the city council; he should take responsibility for poor performance when it happens.

For the record, and regular Evening News readers will know this, I was actually welcoming a new pot of Government cash available for the city council to bid for to improve this service. Yet his hasty reply misses the point completely - perhaps in future he should actually read what is said, and not allow his poor judgement to cost the city as it does.

For the record, and he has received the same information from the Chief Executive as I have, the city council did not bid for extra Government funds last time because "the bidding process makes heavy demands on senior staff time" - those are the exact words of the Chief Executive.

Readers may be surprised that Coun Mackenzie-Williams did not think getting more cash from the Government was a priority, especially when councillors are always moaning about unfair funding formulae.

Still, they had time to increase council tax by nearly 10 per cent, even if they didn't have the time to bid for more money from Government.

I stand by what I said in my Press release - I will lobby the Government on behalf of the city council if they want me to, provided of course, they can be bothered to submit a bid in the first place.

MICHAEL FOSTER MP, Worcester.