ALL the documents relating to Cllr Stephen MacLoughlin’s computer porn hearing have finally been published – but critics claim they raise more questions than they answer.

A week after the former Bournemouth council leader heard he would face no further action, the full dossier of witness statements and investigation reports have been made public.

But they have only served to add further fuel to the fire as to whether Bournemouth chief executive Pam Donnellan and monitoring officer Joy Postings were right not to refer the matter to the Standards Board and ins-tead deal with it confidentially.

The fresh revelations contained within the documents include:

• Cllr MacLoughlin made repeated visits to one website, which contained 121 images. It’s not possible to say how many of these were viewed.

• Ms Donnellan’s witness statement refers to the images as “above top shelf,” “adult hard porn type images” and “male and female pornography”. The council had originally said it was a “limited amount of top-shelf material”.

• The images first came to light because of a virus on Cllr MacLoughlin’s laptop and not during a routine service, as originally stated by the council.

The “worm” virus was in the form of a recurring pop-up message that could not be deleted.

• The decision to ask a QC for a second opinion was made by deputy monitoring officer Tanya Coulter.

Cllr MacLoughlin was not consulted or involved in this.

• In her instructions to QC James Goudie, Ms Coulter expressed concerns about the official investigator’s draft report and clearly set out the opposing view. She also asked Mr Goudie QC to discuss the matter with her BEFORE providing written advice, because of its “sensitive nature”.

• A fee of £3,000 was paid to Mr Goudie QC. Investigator Meic Sullivan-Gould has received £8,941.30 so far. The cost of the deputy monitoring officer’s time on the case amounts to £5,580.93, bringing the total so far to £17,522.23.

Cllr Anne Rey, leader of the Independent group, resigned from the Standards Committee following last week’s hearing. She said the deputy monitoring officer should never have sought a second opinion.

“Why on earth did we pay a further £3,000 when we already had an investigator’s opinion?” she asked.

“It all came down to the fact that the powers-that-be didn’t like what the investigator was telling us. Well, that’s tough. We’ve never, ever had a QC in any of the other hearings. That is not the way to do things.”

And Cllr Claire Smith, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said the instructions to counsel appeared to be “a clear directive”.

She added: “If Cllr MacLoughlin was not acting as a councillor when viewing these images, then why did the council and council taxpayers have to pay for that laptop to be repaired and for him to be issued with a new one? He should have paid for that himself as a private individual.

“I don’t particularly care what he looks at but I do object to paying for it through my council tax.”