Wikipedia Entries Of One In Six MPs Edited From Parliament

Expenses Scandals Erased And Incest Laws Clarified: Wikipedia Edits Made From Parliament

MPs and their staff have made over 10,000 edits to Wikipedia pages, some of which were designed to cover up embarrassing details of expenses abuse.

An analysis of the site's records by by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism for The Independent discovered that nearly one in six MPs had their entires changed from parliament.

One MP, Joan Ryan, had amended her entry 10 times and was successful in removing any mention of parliamentary expenses from the site.

In 2009 the Daily Telegraph reported that she claimed more than £4,500 for work on her home in her constituency of Enfield North, north London.

Ryan told the Bureau she had altered her Wikipedia page "whenever there's misleading or untruthful information been placed on it.”

The Bureau was able to identify where the edits came from as all traffic to the site can be traced to Parliament's two IP addresses.

However not all the edits made were concerned with protecting MPs' reputations.

There were seven changes to the 'laws about incest' page including the addition of jurisdictions where it is legal.

Corrections were made to the page which dealt with whether Pringles were legally crisps or cakes.

Tory MP Michael Fabricant was added to a list of 'Notable DJs'.

And the entry for The Lord of The Rings films was edited to describe it as: "12 hours of utter tripe about some little bender running around trying to find a ring with his equally benderish mates".

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