Councillors told to reveal accounts
COUNCILLORS in Northumberland have been told to reveal any anonymous social media accounts they run, in a bid to clamp down on “horrible” abuse.
The county’s elected representatives agreed at a meeting on Wednesday to formally declare their online activities after hearing harrowing tales of how malicious comments and “lies” had damaged lives.
Under a motion proposed by deputy Tory council leader Richard Wearmouth, councillors have been given up to 10 days to add details of any social media pages or accounts they edit, where it is not already clear or freely available to the public, to the local authority’s register of interests.
In a passionate speech at
county hall on Wednesday afternoon, independent group councillor Anne Dale told colleagues that she had suffered online abuse since 2014 and it “destroyed my life for a while”.
The Stocksfield and Broomhaugh representative said she had been “horrified” that it had taken so long for the issue to be tackled, asking: “Why didn’t you stop it beforehand? I have seen people hurt, badly hurt. Lies, all kinds of things spread about people that are untrue, shared, and shared, and shared.”
She added: “You had all kinds of things going through this council that were wrong, incorrect, lies, all played out on Facebook - fun. Well it was not fun and you have hurt a lot of people.”
Labour councillor Mary Murphy and Tory Paul Ezhilchelvan warned it would be impossible to police whether councillors had anonymous accounts, to which Coun Wearmouth replied that the system would rely on members being honest.
The social media proposal was added to a resolution to amend the council’s code of conduct to make councillors disclose membership of various organisations, including the freemasons, following a previous debate in May.