After facing accusations that his Labour group is anti-democratic, Coun Watson says he hopes all parties can work together to move the city forward.

His remarks came after the Tories failed at a meeting last night to get Conservative councillors chosen to chair some of Sunderland City Council's committees.

Tory leader Coun Lee Martin said he respected a number of the Labour committee chairs, but he wanted to see members from other groups put their experience to good use by taking up some of the positions.

"We're making the point that opposition members should take part and have a lot of experience to bring," he said.

"There are a lot of new elected Labour councillors that find themselves chairs and vice-chairs of committees."

The Tories' main focus was on the council's scrutiny committees, which examine the work of the ruling Labour cabinet.

Coun Martin said he felt that if the council had a Labour executive, the opposition parties should have a bigger role in scrutiny.

He pointed to Newcastle Council, where the Liberal Democrats are in control but decided to give the committee chair positions to Labour.

He added that he thought the special allowance for committee chairs – which goes up to around £12,000 a year – was too much and should be lowered.

Coun Watson said the Tories' amendments were "ill thought out".

He said that one minute the Tories were saying their nominated councillors were more experienced, and the next they put forward newly-elected councillors.

He said that Coun Martin had not come to him before the meeting to discuss the amendments and he would have had more chance of getting his views taken on board if he had done.

Independent councillor Colin Wakefield was also suggested to chair two committees, and Coun Watson said he would have been more minded to accept this if it had not been "sprung" on him.

But speaking after the meeting, he said he had invited Coun Martin to meet with him on a regular basis and things had a chance of changing in the future.

He said: "I think council members are all elected by the people of the city and working together would just be of benefit to the city – and not a lot of energy would be wasted on the other scoring-points type of politics."

He added that scrutiny committees were supposed to be completely non-political, and that it was quite easy for people who weren't in the decision-making position to say they would do things differently.

On the subject of special allowances for committee chairs, he said these were set independently and were not remuneration but compensation.