South West Devon MP Rebecca Smith has survived a motion callling for her to resign her seat on Plymouth City Council

The motion was brought by Plympton Erle Councillor Terri Beer and seconded by St Mary's ward aspirant Maddi Bridgeman who represents Moor View.

Cllr Beer praised the attributes of Ms Smith and her hard work as an MP, describing her as a 'remarkable woman'.

Aside from her partial attendance at that meeting, Ms Smith had only spent a total of 21 minutes in council meetings in the current municipal year.

Cllr Beer pointed out that Ms Smith receives an annual allowance of £13,700 from Plymouth Council tax payers as a result of being a councillor and as an MP she gets a further £93,000 as an annual salary plus substantial support resources such as an office and staff.

Cllr Beer said that Ms Smith had been using her Parliamentary staff to deal with some items of her council case work, so effectively being paid for the same thing twice and there was not a level playing field as Cllr Beer herself was not able to draw on a body of support staff and dealt with all her casework herself.

Cllr Bridgeman in speaking to the motion pointed out that £13,700 for 21 minutes of work equates to roughly £360 per minute.

Ms Smith was strongly defended by her party colleagues.

Conservative Group Leader Andy Lugger emphasised that UK law does not prohibit someone simultaneously holding roles as both a local councillor and an MP.

There were only three or four council meetings left until the end of the municipal year and Ms Smith, who has already indicated she would be standing down from the council in next May's local elections, should be allowed to serve out her time in the role.

Cllr Smith then rose to speak, referring to the motion as a 'kangaroo court' and said she would start off by reading out the list of people who had asked her to resign - except there was no such list.

She indicated the constitution requires councillors to attend once within 6 months and this she had done.

She added that most of the hard work is done out and about in the community and dealing with casework, which she has continued to do.

Cllr Smith did not feel it would be in the interests of Plymstock Radford ward to resign now as they would lose out on being able to receive the remaining allocation of her community grant and living streets money.

She also felt she was being held to an unfair standard and that this motion was likely to put people off standing for election in future.

The motion calling for Rebecca Smith to resign from the council was subsequently defeated by 48 votes to 3 with 2 abstentions.

Curiously the automatic vote recording machine recorded a vote by Cllr Tudor Evans OBE even though he was absent from the meeting due to illness, with his apologies being recorded at the start of the meeting.