COUNCIL leader Stephen McCabe is at the centre of a political storm after he joked about the Yes Scotland pro-independence website being blocked in Inverclyde schools.

Pupils who will be eligible to vote in September’s historic referendum have been unable to access any of the site’s information — while the pro-union Better Together webpages are freely available to them.

When asked on social network Twitter when the issue would be fixed, the Labour councillor quipped: “7 months I’m told Lol.” Voters will go to the polls in just under seven months, on September 18.

Outraged Yes activists today blasted the local authority leader’s ‘flippancy’ on the matter.

Shona McQuarrie — who leads the Yes Inverclyde campaign — told the Telegraph: “This is inexcusable. Mr McCabe was asked a perfectly legitimate question and he chose to make a joke of a very serious matter.

“There’s been no hint of an apology for his flippancy, or a proper explanation as to what has actually been going on here.

“It would be different if both websites were blocked.

“We need to know why the Yes Scotland site was inaccessible, why it was so, and for how long.” Councillor McCabe also tweeted that there had been a ‘technical problem’ which was being resolved, adding: “Sorry to disappoint the conspiracy theorists.” But Mrs McQuarrie insisted: “This is a huge issue. Where is the consideration for what parents think?

“Pupils are not learning anything about the referendum in local schools if they are only being provided with one side of the debate.

“It is profoundly undemocratic and I have been told that loads of parents have been complaining.” One Twitter user, ‘Reasons for an Independent Scotland’, posted: “Yes Scotland is considered ‘society and culture’ whereas Better Together isn’t blocked, do they class it as fiction?” The denial of access issue was flagged up at St Stephen’s and Port Glasgow high schools but it is believed that pupils elsewhere have also been shut out.

Inverclyde Council stressed today that no-one had been deliberately blocked.

A spokesman for the local authority said: “Our IT service have sorted out the small glitch which appears to have caused this.

“There is absolutely no question of any site being deliberately blocked.” The spokesman added: “The first line of the council’s content filtering system is based on website categories. The Yes Scotland website was categorised under ‘society and culture’, which is blocked by default for pupils in schools.

“No-one at the council or school was involved in deciding the category of the website, which meant that it was not accessible.

“As soon as we were alerted to this situation yesterday morning the site was unblocked by applying more detailed filtering rules, to ensure it could be accessed.”