LONDON — Members of the British Parliament and their staff apparently love porn, accessing adult sites from their offices 309,316 times in the last year alone.
According to figures from a Freedom of Information request, the government’s leaders and workers were also blocked from adult sites nearly 850 times a day between May of 2012 and July of this year.
Government computers were reportedly prevented from accessing sex sites 114,844 times last November alone. In April, 55,552 sites were blocked and in June 397 attempts were halted.
February had only 15 porn sites blocked for some unexplained reason, and officials couldn’t explain what kinds of content Parliament’s computer filters determine to be porn.
The embarrassing revelations put a black eye on Prime Minister David Cameron’s nation-wide attempt to force ISPs to implement an opt-in porn filtering program, despite some government sources that believe the numbers could reflect pop-up videos and photos that were not deliberately clicked.
“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,” a statement from the House of Commons, said.
To its credit, a government official said, “We are not going to restrict parliamentarians’ ability to carry out research.”
But according to the Daily Mirror, the TaxPayers’ Alliance said it was alarmed by the numbers. “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,” Matthew Sinclair, the group’s chief executive, said.
He added, “The Internet can be a useful tool for MPs and their staff when it comes to scrutinizing 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 very 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.”