Hundreds of thousands of attempts to access pornographic websites have been made at the UK’s parliament the House of Commons, new figures reveal.
The data, released following a Freedom of Information request, shows more than 300,000 bids were made in the last year.
However it is unclear whether the attempts were made by elected ministers, peers or other parliamentary staff.
Around 5,000 people are believed to work on the parliamentary estate.
The data, released to Huffington Post UK, showed the figures varied hugely – in November last year there were 114,844 attempts, compared to just 15 in February this year.
House of Commons officials said they do not consider the data to be an accurate portrayal of the number of “purposeful requests made”. They 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.
In July UK prime minister David Cameron warned access to online pornography was “corroding childhood”.
He announced new measures that will see most households in the UK having access to pornography blocked, unless they choose to opt-in.