A COUNCILLOR who covertly recorded a conversation with an ''intoxicated'' fellow councillor acted outwith the law and breached his local government code of conduct, the council's monitoring officer has ruled.
Councillor Matthew Duncan, a Liberal Democrat Aberdeen City councillor, used his mobile phone to tape Labour councillor David Maitland at the end of a civic function as they talked about the stadium development for Aberdeen Football Club.
Mr Maitland resigned after councillors expressed concerns about his actions when speaking to them about their voting intentions for the planning decision.
Crawford Langley, Aberdeen City Council's monitoring officer, ruled that Mr Duncan also breached the code by publishing or attempting to publish the contents of the tape.
Mr Duncan recorded the conversation although an investigation had already begun into Mr Maitland's conduct in relation to the planning application for the proposed new stadium.
Mr Maitland was subsequently suspended by the Labour group and resigned from the council. A police investigation into the events is now under way.
In his report, which will go before the council's standards and scrutiny committee on Thursday, Mr Langley says the initial complaint was raised by Councillor Scott Cassie.
However, the report says Mr Duncan was aware of the investigation and by his own admission ''he started thinking how he might record such an approach as had been made to Councillor Cassie and devised a method of using a phone to communicate with an answering machine which would record anything picked up by the phone.''
The next night he made the recording. The report says: ''He intervened in an investigation which was under way and by using loaded questions took the opportunity to encourage Mr Maitland to admit or imply certain things when in a state of considerable intoxication.
''There is, however, no evidence he orchestrated events so as to 'happen' to be in the company of Mr Maitland. Had he done so, there would have been a serious risk he would have imperilled the whole investigation.''
The area that caused most concern was that the media had knowledge of the contents of the tape before an interdict (which has now been settled) was obtained by Mr Maitland.
''I find it impossible to see any basis on which it could be argued that publication of the recording could secure any purpose other than satisfying public curiosity and embarrassing political opponents,'' the report said.
Mr Duncan said he was ''very disappointed'' that he had been refused the chance to have a copy of the report before publication and to respond, as happens at both Westminster and Holyrood.
''There are some parts of the report I would take issue with,'' he added.
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