Redditch Conservative councillors such as Gavin Smithers, Tom Wareing and, more recently, Brandon Clayton, all have one thing in common - short memories.

They tell us Labour has performed badly on health. We inherited 1,500,000 on the operation waiting list and promised to reduce it by 100,000.

To date, we have actually reduced it by 477,000.

They belittle our performance in education, yet we inherited overcrowded schools with classroom sizes rising and standards falling.

This year alone, we have taken another 200,000 primary school children into classes below 30 and are on target to have all primary children in such classes within our five-tear term of office.

We have vastly increased nursery places and for the first time in many years, secondary school class sizes are stable.

They rose rapidly under the Tories and this Labour Government is at last getting on top of the situation by increasing teachers in our schools and the training places available for teaching.

These deceptive Tories try to play down our economic success, yet we have taken unemployment below one million and given those employed more job security by our skilful and prudent handling of the economy, making negative equity in the house market and high mortgage repayments only a bad memory of the Conservative years.

Robin King

Huband Close

Redditch