A Freedom of Information request from the Mail on Sunday has revealed that an adult dating website has been accessed tens of thousands of times in Parliament.
The information shows that the website was accessed over 52,000 times in just seven months from computers in Parliament. That is more hits than many departmental websites received in the same period, and is a figure many SEO professionals would revel in.
It is not clear who had been accessing the sites though, as over 5,000 people had access to the computer network in the period. As well as cabinet members and other MPs, many peers and support staff would also have had access.
Following the announcement of the findings, a spokesman said that the Out Of Town Affairs site could no longer be accessed from computers in the Parliamentary network.
The news has angered many, with Robert Oxley from the TaxPayers’ Alliance, saying:
“Taxpayers expect parliamentarians to spend time making laws and scrutinising the government, not trawling dating websites.”
However, the site’s owner saw the funny side, saying:
“That’s a lot of hits. It’s got to be more than one person going on the site from Parliament. I hope we don’t get hate mail from parliamentary wives now.”
The owner was also keen to distance the site from rumours suggesting it was used by married couples having affairs, despite its name.
He insisted it was an adult dating site primarily, despite the use of search engine optimisation techniques used to market is as an affairs website due to incoming queries from Google.
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