IN A STATEMENT Cornwall Council insisted the use of Twitter in meetings had not been banned.

"The council is fully committed to openness, transparency and engagement including via social media platforms such as Twitter," it said. "In the case of today's meeting, the leader was very concerned about the inappropriate nature of some of the tweets posted by members and their potential impact on the reputation of the council. He expressed these views during the meeting and instructed members to refrain from making these inappropriate comments.

"Today's meeting of the Cabinet, as with all meetings of the full council, the Cabinet and strategic planning, was webcast not only on the council's website, but also via local broadcast media. This demonstrates our ongoing commitment to making our meetings more open and transparent."

Council leader Alec Robertson added: "The council has recently agreed a new code of conduct for broadcasting key meetings of the authority. This sets guidelines to protect the reputation of the council and encourage responsible broadcasting of the meetings.

"It is, therefore, surely not unreasonable to expect at least the same standards from members of the council who have a key role to play in upholding the reputation and standards of the authority.

Broadcast

"In this case it was brought to my attention that some members at the meeting were tweeting inappropriate comments," he said.

"The code of conduct enables the chairman of a meeting to suspend the right to broadcast if they feel it necessary. Following this information, as chairman of the Cabinet meeting I decided to exercise this right and instructed the members to stop tweeting.

"I am aware that some members have queried whether the use of Twitter can be deemed as broadcasting under the code of conduct, and we are looking into this further."