CONTROVERSIAL councillor Owen Lister doesn't give a "damn" about the one-month suspension handed to him for saying disabled children should be guillotined.

Coun Lister remains defiant despite being found guilty, by the council's standards committee, of saying that sending disabled children to school is a waste of money.

He was suspended from the council for a month after a scrutiny committee found him guilty of two counts of bringing the authority in to disrepute. The charges stem from a meeting of the Children's Act task group on September 8 last year.

After an extensive investigation into what was said at the meeting, Bristol solicitor Peter Keith-Lucas found Coun Lister had said: "It would be preferable to guillotine looked-after children with severe emotional and behavioural difficulties than to provide expensive out-of-borough placements for them."

The second comment was that it was a waste of money to provide school places to educate disabled children.

But Mr Keith-Lucas found there was "insufficient evidence" that Coun Lister made any offensive comments "relating to the care and treatment of premature babies or babies with severe health problems who were resuscitated at birth and survived with severe disabilities".

Mr Keith-Lucas said the comments brought the council into disrepute.

In a day-long hearing at the Civic Offices in Euclid Street, Mr Keith-Lucas recommended the committee censure and partially suspend Coun Lister for two months, temporarily banning him from anything to do with children's services.

Instead, the committee opted to fully suspend Coun Lister for a month and censure him.

Coun Lister, who has sat as an independent Conservative for the last eight months, said the dispute came down to a few words.

"Essentially it boils down to whether you believe I said they might as well be guillotined' or should be guillotined'," he said.

"There's a world of difference. I find it incredible they would believe I would support killing children."

He was defiant in the face of the month-long suspension that started yesterday.

"I don't give a damn," Coun Lister said.

"It means the Conservative group will go down to 40 members. In as much as I have been effectively suspended for the last eight months, I have to start work in a month."

But he conceded he would have to tone down his language in future.

"I shall have to," Coun Lister said. "It's no use not doing so."

The council's standards committee had the complaint about Coun Lister referred to the Standards Board for England, but it was sent back for an council organised independent probe.

Coun Lister argued that the "guillotine" referred to dividing the mother from the child by sending the child to a care home in Cornwall and not killing youngsters.