INDEPENDENT councillor Ben Duncan has been stripped of his deputy committee chair roles after being found to have breached the authority's code of conduct over two tweets.

The Brighton and Hove City councillor will also face formal censure from the authority for "repeatedly breaching the code". 

A cross-party panel of councillors, Leo Littman, Ann Norman, and Jeane Lepper, along with Dr David Horne as chairman and independent person, made the decision after a hearing this afternoon. 

Coun. Duncan told the hearing he will appeal the decision, claiming that article ten of the European Convention on Human Rights on freedom of expression trumps any council code of conduct. 

The charges relate to one tweet in June in which Coun Duncan, then a Green councillor, described soldiers marching through Brighton on Armed Forces Day as “hired killers”.

The tweet received the most number of complaints the council had received for any single incident - 60.

Asked by Green councillor Leo Littman whether he still stood by his comments, Coun Duncan said: "Yes in as much they are hired in that they receive a salary and killers reflects what is an contractual obligation.

"I am not suggesting every member has killed but they must be prepared when push comes to shove when obeying a superior officer." 

A second charge relates to a tweet he wrote in June which read: “Blasphemous 7yo wants ‘Islam book’ to press flowers in (it’s big and heavy). Should I stone her to death when I get home from work?”

This provoked a complaint from Sunny Choudhury, president of the Brighton District Bangladeshi Shomity, who described the tweets as “deeply distasteful”and “hurtful to himself and other Muslims” which were not “befitting” of a city councillor and did “more to divide our community than bring people together”.

Coun Duncan said he did not believe that Islam was “a violent religion” and that his tweet was “aimed at a small minority of extreme adherents of Islam who practise violence in the name of their religious beliefs”.

Asked whether he regretted sending the tweets, Coun Duncan said: "We are all here wasting time, I have had the whip removed and I am no longer a member of the Green Party and in the process of all this I am no longer employed so with respect I would not have wanted all of that to have happened."