THE council leader at the centre of a computer porn inquiry is today facing renewed pressure to quit – including a call from his own side.

Cllr Stephen MacLoughlin, Conservative leader of Bournemouth Borough Council, faces a hearing into his conduct over the adult websites viewed on his council laptop.

Now a member of his own group has joined those saying he should have stood down while the issue was investigated.

But Cllr MacLoughlin has said he won’t resign and insisted: “There is no turmoil at the Town Hall.”

Last week, a meeting of the council’s standards board decided he potentially breached the council’s code of conduct when his computer was used to access top-shelf material. He will face a hearing in mid-August, which could be held in public.

Long-serving Conservative Cllr Basil Ratcliffe told the Daily Echo: “Having it in public is an excellent idea. It’s the only way of letting people see that things have been dealt with in a proper manner.

“I think you should always stand aside until you’re cleared if there’s something hanging over your head. It would have been far better to stand aside until the matter was dealt with.”

Independent group leader Cllr Anne Rey said: “I’ve said right from the start that he should have resigned straight away.

“He has held his position ever since and if it had been an opposition member or a member of staff, they would have been gone.”

Cllr Claire Smith, leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition, said: “As I said at the beginning when this story broke, he should have done the decent thing and stepped down straight away as leader.

“Every time someone comes under investigation all 54 councillors are tarred with the same brush and that’s why we should have a completely open investigation into all of the allegations and it should be done quickly.”

Cllr MacLoughlin told the Echo he would have stood down when the issue became public knowledge last October if his colleagues had asked him to.

“Both the Conservative group and the council gave me their confidence, their support and therefore there was no intention to resign and the situation hasn’t changed,” he said.

He denied that the work of the council was being overshadowed by his own problems or those of other councillors.

Fellow Conservative Cllr Richard Powell was recently revealed by the Echo to have sent racist text messages, while Cllr Douglas Spencer faces a national Tory party inquiry into unspecified allegations.

Cllr MacLoughlin said: “One of the headlines I saw last week was ‘Turmoil at Town Hall’. There’s no turmoil – everybody is focused on doing the job.

“We face a very difficult set of circumstances with the budget last week, where the chancellor indicated that the public sector outside protected departments faced 25 per cent cuts in the next five years. We are focused on the job at hand.”

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