Over two million pornographic web pages had been accessed by DWP civil servants in the eight months since the investigation began, according to The Sun, which broke the story. One civil servant had since been convicted for downloading child porn and the police were investigating two others.
Speaking to the BBC, a spokeswoman for the Department confirmed that "The DWP regularly screened its computers for potentially offensive and inappropriate material."
However, the spokeswoman added that, "In the majority of cases where monitoring has picked up apparent inappropriate use, further investigation shows that staff innocently followed a link from another site and were unaware of its content."
Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesman Steve Webb told BBC News Online that all 227 people disciplined should have been sacked, calling for a zero tolerance approach. "Any public servants who accesses porn sites at work should lose their jobs," he said.
However, Tom Potbury, an employment law specialist with Masons, the international law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, urged caution:
"Employers and Mr Webb should bear in mind that compensation for unfair dismissal can be as much as £63,000 per employee. Therefore, even in cases of apparently obvious employee misconduct such as downloading pornography at work, employers need to follow a fair procedure.
"If the employer had not previously pointed out to staff that downloading pornography could result in dismissal, dismissals could be unfair. Similarly, if staff are not given an opportunity to explain themselves dismissals will probably be unfair; it is unlikely to be fair to dismiss an employee who has visited a pornographic web site by accident.
"As ever, prevention is better than cure. Implementing systems which prevent users accessing pornography is cheaper and less time-consuming than dismissing large numbers of employees for internet misuse then having to deal with their unfair dismissal claims in an Employment Tribunal."