HAVING increased my personal vote while standing for the Liberal Democrats against James Alexander in the recent election, I feel emboldened to point out a factual error in Coun Boyce’s letter (Letters, June 3).

Her allegation of an unfair allocation of committee chairs when we took control of the council in 2003 is simply untrue. At that time, the Liberal Democrats had 30 (64 per cent) of the council seats and took 60 per cent of those chairs which attracted responsibility payments.

Labour had 14 seats and were allocated 37 per cent; an independent took the remaining chair.

In addition, Labour were offered a place on the council’s executive but declined it. Today we find that, with 55 per cent of the seats, Labour has taken 74 per cent of the chairs – hardly proportionate.

This is more than hypocritical given that only two years ago Labour argued that scrutiny of executive business should be led by the opposition.

This led to the abolition of the shadow executive, eliminating one counterweight to the power of the one-party executive/cabinet committee.

Martin Bartlett, Scarcroft Road, York.

• COUN James Alexander seems a little rattled at the criticism that he has taken for Labour’s actions in its first week in office (Letters, June2).

This even extends to the red herring of pointing out for the second time that I was a Lib Dem candidate – something that should be obvious from me supplying my name and address at the end of my letters. I am hiding nothing.

What Coun Alexander is trying to do is cleverly reposition a previous stance that Labour took under the tenuous label of ‘proportionality’. This was not position they took when they proposed that chairs of all scrutiny committees should come from opposition parties.

This was a position that I agreed with Labour on and stated that in my letter. Their hypocrisy has been exposed by reversing that view now that it is politically expedient and trying to hide this under the euphemism of ‘proportionality’.

An administration should always be accountable and not be self-scrutinising. Period.

Nick Love, Deangate, York.