Public Petitions
96. Petitions provide a means for members of the
public to have their voice heard in Parliament. During the 1997
Parliament, the House received a total of 321 petitions (an average
of about 80 per year), although the number of petitions presented
in a Session has varied significantly over the past ten years
or so, from 2,651 in 1992-93 to just 36 in the 2000-01 Session.
97. The text of each petition is printed as a supplement
to the Votes and Proceedings, and a copy is sent to the relevant
Government department. If the Minister chooses to reply to the
petition, the reply (known as 'observations') is also printed
in the Vote. There is no requirement for the Government
to reply to a petition; of the 602 petitions presented between
1994-95 and 2001-02, 65% (394) received a reply.
98. In Scotland, petitions are submitted directly
to the Public Petitions Committee. The Committee may then forward
the petition to another body for further consideration—usually
another committee of the Parliament but sometimes the Scottish
Executive—consider the petition itself, or recommend a debate
on it in the plenary session. Of the 137 petitions considered
in the 2001-02 Parliamentary Year, at 17 meetings of the Committee,
45 were referred to subject committees.
99. Very little is currently done with petitions
to the House of Commons. Most are read on the Floor of the House,
but at a time of day when they are likely to receive little public
attention, even under the new sitting hours. All are printed,
but the supplements to the Votes and Proceedings are not widely
read, even by the standards of Parliamentary publications. Many
or most receive a response from the Government, but for a sizeable
minority of petitions nothing at all happens. Many relate to issues
which are already clearly under discussion in Parliament in some
way. Nevertheless, we believe that there is a case for the
House to do more with public petitions which, if handled correctly,
represent a potentially significant avenue for communication between
the public and Parliament.
100. We recommend that the Liaison Committee and
Procedure Committee consider a process whereby public petitions
should automatically stand referred to the relevant select committee.
It would then be for the committee to decide whether or not to
conduct an inquiry into the issues raised, or to take them into
account in the context of a current or forthcoming inquiry.
In many cases, the committee may wish simply to ask the Government
for a response to the petition, which could then be sent to the
petitioners and subsequently published, perhaps in an annual or
biennial report on petitions, or perhaps in its annual report
to the Liaison Committee. In other cases, a petition might be
taken into account as part of an inquiry which the committee is
already undertaking or plans to undertake in the near future.
In some cases, the committee might decide to reject a petition.
The most common example of this, we believe, would be petitions
which ask the House to address matters which are properly the
responsibility of some other body. Petitions relating to court
judgements, for example, or to local authority planning decisions,
are not uncommon,[7]
and the continued presentation of such petitions might serve to
raise unrealistic expectations about what can be achieved by petitioning
the House. We do not envisage that any new proposals for referring
petitions to a select committee should replace the current arrangements
whereby petitions are printed with the Vote and may receive observations
from the Government.
RULES GOVERNING THE SUBMISSION OF
PETITIONS
101. Petitions must be specifically and respectfully
addressed to the House of Commons and end with a suitable closing
phrase.[8]
Each signatory must include his or her address and the wording
must be 'respectful, decorous and temperate'. Each Petition must
contain a request to the House of Commons which is within its
competence to grant. A further requirement is that the petition
should be hand-written, with no interlineations, deletions or
insertions. This rule applies only to the main page of the petition;
on subsequent sheets for signatures it may be typed or printed,
and need only contain the part of the petition containing the
request to the House.
102. The requirement that petitions be in manuscript
derives from a Resolution of 1656, which required 'no private
Petition, to be directed to the Parliament, to be printed before
the same read in the House'.[9]
This was against the background of the abundance of political
pamphlets against the Commonwealth, when the common hangman's
major duty was to burn those pamphlets condemned by Parliament.
It was also, of course, long before the days when printing and
typescript ceased to be reserved for published documents and became
a normal mode of private written communication.
103. In 1992, the Procedure Committee considered
this requirement as part of a wider review of public petitions
and recommended that it should be retained.[10]
Since that Report was produced, more than a decade ago, the use
of word processors has risen tremendously; the proportion of households
with a computer has more than doubled.[11]
Many, if not most people now use the keyboard in preference to
the pen as the usual instrument of written communication. It is
therefore increasingly difficult to justify the continuing requirement
that petitions be in manuscript, which appears archaic and imposes
a minor additional labour on petitioners.[12]
104. We recommend that the House accept petitions
in both typescript and manuscript, although the present restriction
against interlineations, deletions and insertions should be retained
so that it is clear that the wording of the petition has not been
changed without the petitioner's knowledge. The top sheet—the
authoritative copy of the petition—should continue to be
distinguished from sheets of additional signatures by the Member
presenting it signing in the top right-hand corner, as is the
current practice.
7 Of 53 Petitions presented in first 86 sitting days
of the current Session, 12 related to local authority matters. Back
8
Petitions usually begin 'To the House of Commons' and end 'And
the Petitioners remain, etc.'. The more traditional form, which
was compulsory until 1993 and is still sometimes used, begins
'To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled' and ends
'And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c.'. Back
9
CJ (1651-59) 427. Back
10
Fourth Report from the Procedure Committee, Session 1991-92, Public
Petitions, HC 286, paragraphs 17-19. Back
11
Between 1991-92 and 2001-02, the proportion of households with
a home computer rose from 21% to 49%: Social Trends No. 30,
Office for National Statistics, 2000, Figure 13.2, p. 210 and
Social Trends No. 33, Office for National Statistics, 2003,
Figure 13.13, p. 230. Back
12
Or in some cases on Members and their staff who must transcribe
typewritten petitions before presentation. Back
