Porn access,in British,Government offices

4 September 2013 Last updated at 03:09

Parliamentary porn consumption laid bare in official figures

Officials have not disclosed which sites they have classified as pornographic

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More than 300,000 attempts were made to access pornographic websites at the Houses of Parliament in the past year, official records suggest.

It is unclear whether MPs, peers or other staff are responsible, House of Commons officials said.

The figures were not all "purposeful requests" and may have been exaggerated by third-party software and websites that reload themselves, they added.

About 5,000 people work on the parliamentary estate.


Attempts per month

May 2012: 2,141
June 2012: 2,261
July 2012: 6,024
August 2012: 26,952
September 2012: 15,804
October 2012: 3,391
November 2012: 114,844
December 2012: 6,918
January 2013: 18,494
February 2013: 15
March 2013: 22,470
April 2013: 55,552
May 2013: 18,346
June 2013: 397
July 2013: 15,707
The data was released following a Freedom of Information request by Huffington Post UK, which published the story with the headline Oh Yes, Minister!

However, the figures vary wildly: in November, there were 114,844 attempts to access websites classed as pornographic, but just 15 in February.

'Ridiculous'
A Commons spokeswoman said: "We do not consider the data to provide an accurate representation of the number of purposeful requests made by network users."

This was because there was a "variety of ways in which websites can be designed to act, react and interact and due to the potential operation of third party software," she said.

Some of the hits may have been registered by websites that generate a number of views during a single visit, or those that automatically link to other sites via pop-ups, she explained.

Prime Minister David Cameron announced in July that most households in the UK would have pornography blocked by their internet provider unless they chose to receive it.

Online pornography was "corroding childhood" and "distorting" children's understanding of sex and relationships, he argued.

I would assume within those buildings one would need to log on?
If so that would mean they could trace those accessing the porn, now wouldn't that be interesting
What would be even more interesting would be the type of porn they were viewing!

To me, you'd think that in a Government building, on Government computers, they wouldn't/shouldn't be using any 3rd party software that could bring them to pornographic websites.


Shouldn't they all be working?

reply to post by scotsdavy1


so....those peak months....what were the joke emails in circulation?

The only other thing is being suckered into "click here" by some nonsuspect spam. The rates by month....there is a story there.