His decision has been welcomed by the Conservative opposition councillor who quizzed him over his travel expenses at last month’s full council meeting.

“Mr Parker should be praised for taking this swift action,” said Gavin Logan. “As far as I am concerned the matter is now closed.” Mr Parker told the Border Telegraph this week that he had arranged for all the taxi trips he makes on council business, backdated to April last year, to be published online where they are listed below the register of each member’s interests.

The list for last month shows that Mr Parker made two return taxi trips to Edinburgh for meetings of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) and three other journeys to and from his home in Tweedbank – a business visit to Farne Salmon in Duns and, as a ward councillor for Leaderdale and Melrose, to two community council engagements in Oxton and Earlston.

At last month’s meeting, Councillor Logan incurred the wrath of many of Mr Parker’s colleagues on the ruling administration at Newtown by asking him why his journeys were not itemised on the website like the 33 other councillors.

Mr Parker told him: “As you may have noticed, I am visually impaired and, because of my disability, particular arrangements require to be made to allow me to undertake my duties.

“These, of course, constitute reasonable adjustments in terms of the Equality Act.

“Therefore, staff are made available to drive me to meetings and I use taxis where appropriate. Neither of these require me to submit a claim form. In fact, I make no claims directly so therefore have no claim forms to publish.” Mr Parker recalled this week that he had been “genuinely very upset” at having to answer Mr Logan’s question.

“It meant I had to discuss my disability in public which is something I have never done,” he reflected. “I would have much preferred to have been approached privately by Mr Logan to explain the situation.

“As I have nothing to hide and in a spirit of openness and transparency, I chose to gave a reply and it is in that same spirit that I have chosen, for what it is worth, to list my taxi journeys based on the invoices which the taxi companies send in.

“But as I explained at the time, I depend for most of my journeys on council officers who then reclaim their mileage and rightly do not expect these personal details to be made public.

“However, all costs are properly accounted for and are included in the annual report to council on members’ expenses.” That report, for 2013/14, revealed that the 34 councillors claimed around £80,000 in travel expenses. In Mr Parker’s case, his expenses totalled £3,373 on top of his leader’s salary of £32,759.