Parliamentary perverts: UK Parliament's computers used to access pornography

2013-09-29 3

Computers at the UK's Houses of Parliament were used to make more than 300,000 attempts at accessing Websites containing pornographic material in the last year, parliamentary records show.

The figures were released after the Huffington Post made a Freedom of Information request.

Around 5,000 people work in Parliament including MPs, Lords and other staffers. The report did not specify who was responsible.

The figures, which cover the period between May 2012 and July 2013 show large variations in the number of requests. November 2012 saw he most attempts with 114,844 while February this year saw the lowest with just 15.

Parliamentary officials said the data was inflated by websites that automatically refresh while pop-ups could also increase the number of attempts recorded.

The BBC reported that a spokesman for the House of Commons said that it did "not consider the data to provide an accurate representation of the number of purposeful requests made by network users."

The spokesman said that the figures did not prove that people had intended to access pornographic material, adding "We are not going to restrict Parliamentarians' ability to carry out research."

The report also revealed users of Parliament's computer as frequent visitors to Websites including online grocery shopping, gambling and illegal filesharing.

In response to the news, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance Matthew Sinclair, said: "This highlights the fact that many people working in Parliament are spending far too much time on websites that have nothing to do with their job."

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