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The government has rejected claims that it was wrong to "name and shame" West Berkshire social services department.

In a House of Commons debate last week, David Rendel, Liberal Democrat MP for Newbury, said health secretary Alan Milburn was wrong last October to name West Berkshire as one of the 14 worst performing social services departments. The naming had caused "an explosion of real anger" among councillors and staff who had been "so viciously and unfairly maligned".

Rendel pointed to a social services joint review published the day before Milburn's speech, which made the health secretary's comments "absurd, laughable, ridiculous and totally contradicted by the review".

Rendel said that according to the review, although the council was not providing a high level of good quality social care, "it was at least among the top 8 per cent of councils that had excellent prospects for improvement".

But health minister John Hutton responded that although the council had "clearly improved slightly", its performance against indicators over the past three years had been "poor", and Milburn had been right to put it in the bottom 14. In the most recent year, only 56 per cent of the indicators showed "acceptable performance or better", he added. In reply Rendel said that the indicators were "ridiculous".

West Berkshire had "benefited significantly" from government investment in social services, claimed Hutton. There was an increase of 8.5 per cent in cash allocated to total personal social services this year and total council funding between 1997 and 2002 was up by more than one-third, he said.

MPs and others "must not fall into the trap of simply assuming that all of these problems can be addressed only through the local government financial settlement," Hutton said. He added that the council should consider the suggestions for improvement put forward by health minister Jacqui Smith at a meeting last November with Berkshire MPs and a council delegation.

These included using the Health Act 1999 to improve partnership-working with the NHS, setting up a care trust, exploring the possibility of public-private partnerships to attract extra investment, and improving delivery by the using the government's pathfinder programme.

Rendel's claim that West Berkshire received less funding per head than comparable councils - for example, £77 per child in 2000-1 compared with £111 for Bracknell - was denied by Hutton, who said the Newbury MP had failed to take into account the area's relative wealth and affluence.