§ Lord Greavesasked the Chairman of Committees:
Whether the filtering of e-mails by the Parliamentary Communications Directorate includes censorship of e-mails to and from Members of the House of Lords in line with that applied to Members of the House of Commons; if so, what guidance has been published as to what may and may not be written; what is the definition of "profanities of a sexual or offensive nature"; and who is responsible for setting the rules. [HL1309]
§ The Chairman of Committees (Lord Brabazon of Tara)In response to concerns from users of the Parliamentary Network about the amount of unwanted and, in some cases, obscene e-mail being received, and with the agreement of the Information Committees of both Houses, the Parliamentary Communications Directorate (PCD) introduced a new service on 13 January to block incoming e-mails from non-parliamentary addresses which contain inappropriate or offensive text. PCD recognises that, on occasion, correspondents may legitimately use strong language, and incoming e-mails that contain only a few mild expletives will be unaffected. Only those e-mails that contain a high proportion of the most offensive obscenities are blocked automatically. Futhermore, in order to prevent genuine e-mails from being lost, the sender of any e-mail that is blocked will be notified and invited to contact the intended recipient to arrange for the e-mail to be released.
The service does not affect e-mails sent from addresses within the Parliamentary Network either to external or other internal addresses or e-mails sent by remote users of the Network via Citrix. The 184WA arrangements for incoming e-mails apply equally to Members and staff of both Houses.