An opposition council leader has been accused of Islamophobia after referencing the Taliban during a speech.

Leader of the Medway Tories Cllr Adrian Gulvin (Con) was speaking about the administration’s proposed budget at a full council meeting held last week (February 29).

During the hearing he compared asking Homes England to remove Medway Council HQ’s Grade-II listing with asking the Taliban to arrange a drinks party.

He was speaking in reference to plans to borrow £22 million for the repair and refurbishment of Gun Wharf, which he said was wrongly prioritised during a time of financial hardship for the local authority.

The Tory leader said the Grade-II listing was an obstacle which made refurbishment more expensive and difficult and the administration needed to be more active in getting it removed.

Cllr Gulvin said: “Much more effort needs to be made to get that building delisted. Just asking Historic England is a waste of time.

“You might as well have asked the Taliban if you could hold a drinks party.”

The “flippant” comments were criticised by Labour members, with Cllr Naushabah Khan (Lab), portfolio holder for housing and property, claiming they were Islamophobic and asking Cllr Gulvin to apologise.

Cllr Khan said: “I hope that Cllr Gulvin would reflect and apologise for his Islamophobic comments made earlier.

“I’m not sure why he thought that analogy was appropriate for this chamber.

“I think those comments help us to understand the make-up of his group and how reflective it is of Medway.”

She also tweeted about the comments made, saying “Flippant Islamophobia from leader of the @MedwayTories in the council chamber during the budget - not even trying to hide it.”

Opposition member Cllr Andrew Lawrence responded to the accusation.

He said: “Cllr Khan has tweeted an outrageous tweet where she bandies about the charge of Islamophobia.

“I think that is an absolutely disgraceful way to behave from someone who wishes to be a PPC [Prospective Parliamentary Candidate].”

Cllr Khan made a point of order to reply, saying: “I didn’t tweet it, I said it. I said it directly. You should have raised it then. I said it in the chamber during my speech.”

Cllr Lawrence called her comments “shameful”, to which she replied: “I am not ashamed”.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Cllr Khan said: “It was highly inappropriate for Cllr Gulvin to make the comments he did in the council chamber. This is a public meeting which is meant to be inclusive.

“Casual Islamophobia is not ok, cannot be normalised and needs to be called out. If comments of this nature had been targeted at any other community then, rightly so, they would not have been accepted as appropriate.

“I raised my concerns about the comments at the time and directly asked Cllr Gulvin to apologise. I also shared my frustrations on social media. He did not respond to this request.

“Cllr Lawrence appeared upset by my request. Perhaps he thought it was ‘political correctness gone mad’, but frankly these views need to be called out for what they are, rather than ignored because people don’t like it when they are called out.”

As far as I’m concerned it’s a fuss about nothing

However, Cllr Gulvin said he believes it would be insulting to Medway’s muslim population to assume they would be offended by the comments.

He said: “I think it would be extremely insulting to the vast majority of muslims to assume that they would be offended at a snide remark at the expense of the Taliban.

“We are very lucky to have a brilliant muslim community here in Medway - I have visited many of our mosques many times and always been made to feel welcome.

“They are a wonderful community and I know our group were mainly upset about the suggestion they could possibly be islamophobic.

“As far as I’m concerned it’s a fuss about nothing.”