A priest illegally used his phone to join a Zoom council meeting while driving to a funeral.

       Father Malcolm Lane, who also serves as a Conservative councillor on Monmouthshire county council, was sitting behind the wheel when he logged on to the meeting on Monday.

       Asked what he was doing, Fr Lane replied: “I’m actually off to conduct a funeral but I’m listening intently.”

       The Anglo-Catholic priest, who serves in the Church in Wales, has been the councillor for Mardy since 2017. He was due to speak about dental clinics on Monday at a meeting of the council’s public services scrutiny committee.

       But when Fr Lane logged onto the meeting, he was behind his steering wheel with his phone filming him from below.

       Cllr Armand Watts, the Labour chairman of the committee, asked: “Malcolm, I’ve just got an observation here, are you driving?”

       Fr Lane, who was wearing his clerical collar, replied: “Yeah, I’m driving. I’m actually off to conduct a funeral but I’m listening intently.”

       Cllr Watts replied, “Hmm, wait a minute, one second,” before consulting with the committee clerk.

       Anyone caught using a handheld phone while driving can be fined up to ￡200 and receive six penalty points on their driving licence.

       Cllr Watts then said: “Malcolm, my advice to you because I’m not sure where you are, obviously you’ve got important business this morning, would be to possibly pull over if you can.

       “Just turn your camera off maybe.”

       Cllr Lane replied: “Yeah, I will.”

       The exchange was uploaded to YouTube by Monmouthshire county council.

       Other councillors on the call appeared shocked by the priest’s actions.

       Cllr Steven Garratt, the Labour councillor for Overmonnow, was seen shaking his head and giving a thumbs-down gesture.

       A spokesman for the council said it holds meetings online and in-person.

       “This allows councillors to attend all meetings remotely for a variety of reasons,” the spokesman said.

       Fr Lane told The Telegraph: “It was a pure accident. I thought I had turned my camera off as I wished to just listen to the dentistry report. It was just a simple accident.

       “My mobile phone was lying flat in the middle of the car [so] I would not see it.The chair was aware that I apparently was on camera and asked me to pull in which I did.

       “There was no way I was viewing the meeting. That’s exactly how it happened.”