Mr Dawson's personal attack might appear to come from a local resident but this is very far from the truth.

Mr Dawson is the local Labour Party chairman of the Morley North Labour Party. Indeed he stood as the Labour Party candidate against me last May, achieving the lowest vote for a Morley North Labour candidate since 1981! Perhaps he has a particular personal axe to grind with his untruthful allegations but I think the reality of his approach is much more sophisticated.

Mr Dawson is the Labour Party agent for the proposed Labour candidate for Morley – Ed Balls MP. Mr Balls has had difficulty in making any progress with promoting his election in the Morley area. Indeed Mr Balls failed to support the recent campaign to oppose closure of two Morley Post Offices by backing the Government's closure programme and has increased the potential to build on eight of Morley's greenfield sites by supporting the Government's increased housing targets imposed on Leeds City Council. There are other issues we could raise about housing allowances and large taxpayers handouts but Mr Dawson would prefer to distract attention away from the failures of the Labour Party by smearing others.

The key to this bizarre attack can be found in a recent article the YEP published following the paper's analysis of the local election results in Mr Balls's newly adopted constituency. The analysis showed that the Morley Borough Independents polled more votes in the two Morley wards than the Labour Party did across all five wards which make up the new constituency boundary. This is his clear motivation – smear the Independents to try and claw back some support for Ed Balls's Parliamentary challenge in Morley, whenever that election is called.

I suspect his distraction policy will not work and that residents in Morley will make an appropriate choice when the General Election comes.

Coun Robert Finnigan, Morley Borough Independent