COUNCILLORS locked horns in a fierce row over how to respond to Government cuts.

The debate at City Hall yesterday shone a spotlight on divisions within the Labour Party, as it struggles to strike the right note on welfare reforms after its defeat in the General Election.

Councillor Alyas Karmani, leader of the Bradford Independent Group, told the meeting of the full council that he wanted to see people marching in the streets about Government cuts to welfare and to local authority budgets.

He said they would be creating three tiers of people: the well-to-do, those barely surviving and those they were "forcing into an underclass".

And he branded Bradford's soon-to-open Broadway shopping centre "a cathedral of consumerism", saying it would highlight the poverty felt by many in the district.

He said: "How many of our community will be able to afford the £3.50 cappuccino that will be on sale there, or the £4 smoothie?"

Cllr Karmani said interim Labour leader Harriet Harman's refusal to oppose welfare cuts was "an insult to the people of Bradford", and put forward a motion calling on the council to reject austerity, protect existing jobs and resist privatisation of services.

In a speech which garnered applause from many Labour councillors, he added: "I want to see outrage. I want to see people marching against the cuts."

But leader of the Labour council, Councillor David Green, said: "This sort of motion is dishonest and takes us nowhere except down some of the blind alleys of student union debates I used to have in the 1980s."

He added that he disagreed with Ms Harman, saying cuts to welfare would affect "thousands of people in this district".

But he said the council's role was to find practical solutions to help people, such as the district's Get Bradford Working jobs initiative, and put forward an alternative motion to that effect.

And the council's Conservative leader, Councillor Simon Cooke, branded Cllr Karmani's speech "stupid, monstrous nonsense".

He said: "The rhetoric we have just heard is the same rhetoric we have heard from Trots since the 1970s."

He put forward a third version of the motion, calling on the Council to recognise that the UK's budget deficit had more than halved as a proportion of the national budget and Bradford's economy was growing.

Councillor David Robinson (Ind, Wyke) also said he disagreed with Cllr Karmani, saying the only three categories of people were "those that want work, those that are in work and those that don't want work and are on benefits".

When put to the vote, the Labour motion was passed.