The row over Wandsworth's controversial budget cuts reached the national stage this week, when the three local Labour MPs forced a half-hour debate in the Commons on Tuesday.

The MPs attacked Tory Wandsworth for slashing grants to voluntary groups and pleaded with government minister Phil Hope once a Putney schoolboy to force the council to spend the full amount on education recommended by the Government.

Tooting MP Tom Cox, whose early day motion condemning cutbacks to groups like the Parkinson's Disease Society and the Cancer Resource Centre has attracted 52 MPs' signatures, said: "We are talking about one of the richest local authorities in the country.

"If it truly valued the roles of these organisations, it would not be considering reducing funding, but increasing it."

He accused Wandsworth councillors of seeking to ensure that "large sums can be built up in the reserves for elections".

Battersea MP Martin Linton described the cuts as "self-defeating", saying they would cost the public more in the long-term because those left unaided by the voluntary groups would place more demand on social services and the NHS.

The threatened pensioners' lunch clubs would no longer "keep elderly people more active and mobile," he said.

Mr Linton read a letter from a local pensioner, which read: "The luncheon club is a window into the outside world for many a pensioner who will, after leaving the club, spend the rest of the day without seeing or talking to another human being. Try to picture yourself alone in an empty room, hoping that somebody will call; then the phone rings and it's one of your mates from the luncheon club."

Mr Linto said: "That is the kind of organisation that will have to close."

His Putney colleague Tony Colman described "long queues at my surgery" of worried constituents.

Education minister Phil Hope agreed with his Labour colleagues, arguing that Wandsworth enjoyed a 4.1 per cent increase in government grant this year.

He rejected Wandsworth Council's claims that it could not raise council tax for fear of being capped, and quoted a letter to Wandsworth's leaders from the local government minister, Nick Raynsford, which promised: "Where councils set a council tax increase in low single figures they will not be capped."

The letter went on to say that Wandsworth could have "passported" the recommended amount of cash to schools, instead of withholding £529,000, if it had raised tax by two per cent. But he dashed the MPs' hopes of a Government intervention, saying it could not interfere at this late stage in the budgetary process.

He ended the debate by quoting Sir Jeremy Beecham, chair of the Local Government Association, who accused Wandsworth of playing "political games".