To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many of his Department's civil servants were (a) suspended and (b) dismissed for accessing (i) obscene and (ii) other prohibited material on work computers in each of the last five years. (188787)

Since April 2007, one civilian has been suspended and dismissed for an offence relating to misuse of IT facilities, including accessing inappropriate material. Information for previous years is not held centrally in the format requested and could be provided only at disproportionate cost. The Department's rules make clear that deliberate abuse of IT facilities to access inappropriate material is a serious disciplinary offence for which dismissal is likely to be the appropriate penalty.