A call for Kent County Council to make the county “fracking free” has been rejected by county councillors who said it would be unlawful.

The move came after an ill-tempered debate at County Hall, in which a senior Conservative questioned the intelligence of campaigners.

A row broke out after a petition was presented by opponents of fracking to KCC’s cross-party committee on the environment.

The petition, organised by the Faversham and Mid Kent Green party election candidate Tim Valentine, called on the council to adopt a policy of a presumption against fracking.

But following an opening statement by Mr Valentine outlining the case, a debate descended into an argument about whether councillors were permitted to talk about the issue.

Cllr David Brazier (Con), KCC cabinet member for the environment, questioned why supposedly intelligent people had signed a petition knowing that any debate would be closed down because the authority could be compromised when it came to planning applications.

He told the backbench environment scrutiny committee meeting: “I am often approached by groups of people all of whom have failed to spend the five minutes on the internet that it would take to appraise themselves of a good outline of the regulatory framework around this [fracking] process.”

He went on: “This petition has been signed by 3,000 people who have failed to discover by themselves that we cannot accede to this request. So, why is this petition here? These must be intelligent people - you [councillors] are intelligent people - so why is this petition here? We cannot do anything about it. If we did what is being asked of us, it would be unlawful.”

The Conservative majority then proceeded to force a vote to close down the debate but had to rely on the casting vote of committee chairman Paulina Stockell to do so.

Mr Valentine said he was shocked by what had taken place. “I think it showed contempt for the people of Kent. It was quite an extraordinary decision. The problem is that we do not have enough information about the safety of these processes. There are concerns about the impacts in Kent, where we have a very vulnerable water supply.”

Green county councillor Martin Whybrow accused the Conservatives of torpedoing an important debate “We have got here a real concern...3,000 people want to this committee to debate this issue and if anything, this petition does show the public do not understand the process. We should not be kicking this into touch.”

A report on the petition by council officials says KCC could not adopt a blanket ban as government policy did not permit authorities to pre-judge planning applications