Councillor Daniel Seal, who represents Hampstead Garden Suburb, is calling for the public to be allowed to use social media during debates, despite a ban from council leader Lynne Hillan.

She said Twittering and filming would not be allowed during the last full council meeting, when a budget slashing £54m from spending over the next three years was agreed.

Despite this several residents did film and tweet events, and were not ejected and she promised a discussion about it at the next Tory group meeting.

Now Cllr Seal says he wants to “help educate” older members of the Conservative group about social media and get them onside to allow it to be used.

He told the Times Series: “It should be open to the public to film and tweet. I will certainly be tweeting now through some meeting to show what’s going on, it’s an important part of the democratic process.

“It’s not about me, it’s about the public. I’m here as a councillor to serve the community. We’re not lemmings we’re individuals with our own thoughts.

“We have some older members of the group who don’t understand social media and I want to educate them it’s a great way forward. I think it’s a mind set.

“Some of the older people in the group might be scared and not understand they are a harmless bit of fun.

“I can’t promise it will be taken up but I can promise I will be bringing it up at the next group meeting, telling people it’s not something to be scared of.”

Cllr Seal said filming should be done by the council so an official record of any meetings can be shown on the website, and said he disagreed with Cllr Hillan who said bloggers were not ‘respectable’ media.

He added: “It’s important the filming is done officially as we need to make sure the film is an official and accurate record of the meeting. It’s easy for people to edit things to look different.

“I think blogging has a huge role to play, I think it’s respectable medium. What you must remember about bloggers is it’s people’s views and you have a right to choose which blogs you view.

“The more respectable the blogger the bigger the following.”

Cllr Seal has now launched his campaign via Twitter under the handle @dannygseal.

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