Mary Mears has reassured residents that the Conservative-run city council has no plans to scrap free bus passes after Labour election leaflets claimed they would.
The issue came to the fore during last Thursday’s leaders’ election debates when David Cameron accused Labour of scaremongering by saying the Tories would scrap them.
A leaflet distributed on behalf of Labour’s Brighton Pavilion candidate in Brighton Pavilion Nancy Platts and uploaded to thestraightchoice.org says: “The Conservatives would leave pensioners at the mercy of a local care lottery. The Conservatives constantly criticise free bus passes – would they keep them?”
But leader of Brighton and Hove City Council Mary Mears countered on her blog: “I would like to reassure residents that, contrary to the completely misleading literature being pedalled by the Labour Party locally, the Conservatives would not scrap free bus passes for pensioners should they form the next Government after May 6.
“This has been made perfectly clear, and put on public record, by David Cameron in his ‘Pensioner Pledge’ which can be found on the party website. And I was delighted that he took Gordon Brown to task over this during last Thursday’s Leaders’ Debate.
“This sort of scaremongering is grossly irresponsible and does absolutely nothing for the reputation of politics at a time when it can ill-afford to lose any more credibility.”
Thestraightchoice.org is a site where members of the public are encouraged to upload election leaflets so they can be scrutised in exactly this way.
