300,000 attempts ‘to access porn’ from UK parliament computers

Nearly 300,000 “attempts to access websites categorised as pornography” were made from computers within the British Parliament in the last year, official records show.

The figure — which represents more than 800 per day — was released by Palace of Westminster IT chiefs in response to a freedom of information request.

It covers devices linked to the Parliamentary Network, including those used by MPs and peers, their staff and other employees.

Officials sought to play down the significance of the total, insisting it was inflated by pop-ups, auto-refresh and other web design features and did not reflect deliberate efforts to access sexual content.

They are also investigating the reason for wide variations between the monthly figures — with as many as 114,844 in November but just 15 in February.

A House of Commons spokeswoman said: “We do not consider the data to provide an accurate representation of the number of purposeful requests made by network users due to the variety of ways in which websites can be designed to act, react and interact and due to the potential operation of third party software.” Visits to otherwise blocked adult sites “may nevertheless be recorded in this dataset depending on website design”, she said.

The figures were obtained by the Huffington Post UK website.

Matthew Sinclair, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, told HuffPost UK: “These figures highlight the fact that many people working in Parliament are spending far too much time on websites that have nothing to do with their job.

“The internet can be a useful tool for MPs and their staff when it comes to scrutinising Government legislation; however taxpayers expect their MP and those working in their offices to get on with their important jobs rather than spending time surfing questionable websites.

“It’s important that these figures are in the public domain so that taxpayers can see exactly how the time they are paying for is actually being spent.”