A Labour councillor has dubbed AM Nick Ramsay as a ‘hypocrite’ after the Conservative voted down a Welsh Assembly budget handing Monmouthshire a £109,000 windfall reports Christopher Gage.

Councillor Dimitri Batrouni, leader of the Labour group on Monmouthshire County Council said his Tory rival’s decision to vote against the improved 2016/17 draft budget conflicted with the Monmouth AM’s numerous fights for increased funding.

The Assembly shallowed higher education cuts in last week’s budget, meaning Monmouthshire County Council can bank on an extra £109,000 as cuts ease. The area will still take a three per cent overall hit.

Mr Batrouni said, “Quite frankly, this decision highlights how Mr Ramsay is a hypocrite. He asks for extra money and then voted against it. He must know that local school budgets have been cut, youth provision reduced, special needs budgets slashed, road maintenance cut back and more.

“Yet, he voted against an extra £100,000 for Monmouthshire. Residents can only conclude this is what he and local Conservatives want.

“They want residents to either pay extra council tax or suffer the loss of a local service. This shows their contempt for the residents of Monmouthshire, who they have taken for granted for too long.

“They have managed to marry incompetence and complacency when it comes to running [the council] so they have always needed something to blame - like not enough funding. It suits them if Monmouthshire doesn’t get extra money,” he said.

Under the previous draft budget, Monmouthshire, Powys and Ceredigion faced the deepest cuts in Wales, whilst Mr Ramsay claimed rural areas were being unfairly penalised.

The Tory AM said the extra cash for Monmouth and the NHS was ‘an admission of previous failures’ and he’d voted against the ‘worst settlement in Wales’.

“Whilst I welcome additional funding for the NHS in Wales, it does not make up for the hundreds of million of pounds…cut from health budgets over the last five years,” he said.

Mr Ramsay rejected Mr Batrouni’s claims, saying he was ‘pleased the Welsh government was admitting its folly’, adding the extra cash was ‘too little, too late’.

“Once again we are faced with a budget which badly lets down the people of Monmouthshire. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that in the run up to an Assembly election, money is once again being channelled into urban…authorities and away from rural areas.

“What we really need is a fundamental reform…that is fairer… and recognises the cost of delivering services across larger, more sparsely populated areas,” he said.

To view the draft budget visit gov.wales.