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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Politics
Mikey Smith

Top Tory's Wikipedia edited from Parliament computer to remove links to scandal

A Top Tory's Wikipedia page has been edited - apparently from within Parliament - to remove all mention of the Owen Paterson scandal.

The changes were made to Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng's profile, scrubbing from it any mention of him being an outspoken supporter of Mr Paterson - the Tory MP who quit after breaking lobbying rules.

After the Standards Committee found Mr Paterson had committed an "egregious case of paid advocacy", Mr Kwarteng - hotly tipped to be the next Chancellor - called for the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Kathryn Stone, to "decide her position".

Boris Johnson made an infamous bid to re-write standards rules to get Mr Paterson off the cool - but No10 eventually withdrew its support for the shamed Tory, and he quit as an MP.

Mr Kwarteng later wrote to Ms Stone, apologising for his previous comments.

Mr Kwarteng's Wikipedia was edited (Teessidelive)

He wrote that he "did not mean to express doubt about your ability to discharge your role" and apologised for "any upset or distress my choice of words may have caused."

Today, Mr Kwarteng's Wikipedia entry was edited from an internet address thought to be inside, or linked to the Houses of Parliament.

Anyone can edit Wikipedia anonymously - but a record is kept of the internet connection used to make the change.

The internet connections used to delete the references were owned by Parliament.

The reason given for the deletion was "removing out of date material".

But the changes were reverted by another editor minutes later - and a note added to the page to record the attempted removal.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has been approached for comment.

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