Birmingham City Council has been accused of spending £7,500 of taxpayers’ money on a conference to promote Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles and his cuts agenda.

The Tory-Lib Dem run council is paying to speak at a Local Government conference hosted by free market think tank Reform. Its website lists Birmingham City Council as a sponsor of the event.

The authority’s outlay comes at a time when it is having to cut £320 million from its budget, shed 7,000 jobs.

Birmingham’s Tory cabinet member for equalities and human resources Alan Rudge is a special guest speaker alongside outspoken Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles at Reform’s Localism conference at accountancy firm KPMG’s Canary Wharf offices on June 15.

Erdington Labour MP Jack Dromey said: “What planet are Mike Whitby and his Tory-led council living on?

“In the last few months this council has embarked on the most savage cuts in local government history hitting the most vulnerable in our society the hardest.

"Spending thousands of pounds on a right-wing think tank that wants to privatise much-needed public services and which promotes Eric Pickles is absolutely not the right use of taxpayers’ money.”

Reform is independent of political parties, but promotes the rolling back of the public sector and outsourcing of services including health, education and policing to the private sector. It wants to “remove public services from the escalator of ever-rising costs”.

The think tank routinely sponsors fringe events at party conferences and has the ear of influential politicians, ministers and civil servants.

The main speaker at the conference, Conservative minister Eric Pickles, has launched a series of attacks on wasteful local councils and his front-loading of council budget cuts has been blamed by Liberal Democrats for their performance in last month’s local elections.