The leader of the Conservative group has spoken out after being condemned for “childish behaviour” during a council tax meeting last week, as the feud about the budget continues.

The Harrow Times reported yesterday that Labour councillor for Harrow West, Will Stoodley, slammed Councillor Susan Hall, leader of the Conservative group, and a third of her party, for leaving last Thursday’s meeting in a “disrespectful manner” at 10.15pm without following correct procedure for leaving a members’ meeting still in progress.

But Cllr Hall today said that Cllr Stoodley “had not been paying sufficient attention" and said that the debate concluded closer to "10.45pm" and they had moved on to discuss a later report they were told to vote on.

She said: “We objected to this because it was presented as significantly incomplete. Cllr Stoodley voted for it because he doesn’t care or understand good governance, we walked out because we do.”

She also responded to arguments that the Conservative group had not presented an alternate budget, saying that they had highlighted examples of where Labour could fix the budget, and had pointed to “generalities as opposed to budget lines.”

She added: “Of course Labour’s budget was the only one in town – they had an army of officers write it for them over the course of many months. Cllr Stoodley’s colleagues didn’t write it themselves, toiling by candlelight. We have no luxury officer support, yet still managed to highlight example after example of where Labour could fix their own budget through better decision making. We pointed to individual budget lines, they only spoke to generalities – we gave them all alternate budget in all but name.”

Cllr Hall also said that Cllrs Stoodley and Suresh were “clearly hurting after the meeting.”

“They were whipped into voting for a budget which cut its services, fudges any attempt at real transformation and which ultimately works against the interest of the Harrow residents. No wonder they’re lashing out at us, because we were there to point this out to them.”

She also expressed concern that the deputy leader of the council, Phillip O’Dell, was seen “reading a magazine during the meeting.”

She said: “Councillor Krishna Suresh should have been made more aware of his own colleagues behaviour at the meeting – that way, maybe he could have stopped his own deputy leader reading a magazine throughout proceedings, for which he was twice reprimanded.”