A COUNCILLOR who was very mildly reprimanded for making a ‘below the belt’ personal remark in a council meeting is not sorry.

In fact, Councillor Peter McDonald has doubled down on the disobliging comment he made about political opponent Councillor Adrian Hardman.

In a testy spat at the full meeting of Worcestershire County Council in February Cllr MacDonald, leader of the Labour group in the chamber made reference to Conservative deputy leader of the council’s conviction for drink-driving, and to his apparently snoozing during a meeting.

A complaint was made to the authority’s standards and ethics committee, and the decision was that while it didn’t break the council’s code of conduct, it was ‘below the belt’ and the committee chairman wrote to Cllr McDonald.

The names of either councillor and and the nature of the remark was not disclosed because the code wasn’t broken.

But after the ethics committee discussed the matter this week the councillor for Beacon ward was unrepentant.

He said: “Just to make things open and transparent regarding my actions at the last full county council meeting which has been discussed at the standards and ethics committee.

“I feel it rather strange that anyone would try and discipline me for telling the truth at the last full council meeting: when I made it clear that I would not take lectures from someone who was convicted of being drunk behind the wheel of a car and falls asleep at council meetings.”

He intensified his attack on Cllr Hardman and said: “It beggars belief that anyone with a conviction is still a county councillor let alone being deputy leader of the Council.”

Councillor Hardman, who had to resign from his post as leader of the county council said he did not want to speak about the issue. But it is understood that it wasn’t he who made the complaint to the committee.

At the meeting in February other councillors, particularly Conservatives, did say that they thought Councillor McDonald’s remark was a ‘cheap shot’, but at the ethics committee’s meeting this week, Labour councillor Richard Udall said he was concerned about any attempt to control debate especially if what was said was true and already in the public domain. he added that it was never right to be needlessly offensive but the council chamber was “not a debating society.”