6 Outcomes
107. As we described in paragraph 23, one of the
principal risks to the House of setting up an e-petitions scheme
would be if once implemented it failed to meet expectations raised
by its introduction. Expectations will be created in a number
of areas including—
- Robustness, reliability and
responsiveness of the system itself. We discuss this in paragraphs
134 to 143.
- What is expected or required of a member of the
public wishing to submit an e-petition (see paragraphs 60 to 71)
- The involvement in and commitment to the procedure
of Members of Parliament (see paragraphs 72 to 81).
- Outcomes: what might happen as a result of submitting
an e-petition.
108. Our witnesses emphasised the importance of clarity
over what petitioners might expect as a result of submitting an
e-petition. Richard Allan described that clarity as the most important
issue in introducing e-petitions.[94]
In describing our proposed system we set out how petitioners should
be able to expect, if they wished, to receive further information
about their petition. This information would be of two types,
firstly factual information on the progress of the petition, including
formal presentation, the government response and any further proceedings,
and secondly one or two emails from their constituency Member
of Parliament on the subject matter of the e-petition.
109. For many petitioners this may be sufficient
and it might be that the House would wish to state clearly from
the outset that this should be the most that the public should
expect from the system. It is more than the current petitions
procedure provides. On the other hand, we should note that improvements
to the parliamentary website allowing ready access to information
on a topic or thematic basis are being introduced, which may be
felt to reduce the value of offering similar information as the
outcome of an e-petition.
110. Furthermore the provision of such information
is not strictly speaking a parliamentary outcome. Although the
involvement of the constituency Member is an important parliamentary
dimension to the procedure, a petition is in the end a petition
to the House of Commons as a whole. It seems to us to follow that
on occasions and where appropriate there should be at least the
prospect of an outcome which engages the House as a whole. Tom
Steinberg told us—
I have one very specific request here which is
I think what [petitioners] could reasonably expect is that a handful
of the very largest petitions (as long as they are not specious)
have some debate time. That debate time is not because one Member
has said, "I am going to take this forward and use my adjournment
debate," but because there would be some form of policy—and
I am afraid I do not know your internal mechanisms of working—which
said something like the largest four petitions that are not clearly
specious will get half an hour or one hour of debate time over
the course of the whole year. It is not a lot of time but it would
be a real measurable thing, that you could point all those many
people who had signed up to and say, "Look, we may not have
changed the law exactly as you wanted but we took it seriously
and you can go to Parliament … and watch us talking about
the things that you wanted us to." I think that would be
something that is in your power to offer and would have a real
meaning to the public.[95]
Tom Loosemore agreed, adding that—
There is also something important about how little
understood the mechanics of Parliament versus the Government are
by most people, and taking the opportunity to impress upon people
that Parliament is not the Government and that they are engaging
with Parliament which holds the Government to account I would
find most important.[96]
111. If there were to be dedicated opportunities
to debate certain petitions, there must be a mechanism to select
them. Tom Steinberg suggested that those with the most signatures
should be chosen. Others argued that numbers alone were inadequate;
judgements on the merits of the petitions concerned must also
be involved. As Peter Riddell said—
in practice it has got to be a mixture of the
two, because numbers have something in them but it should not
be arbitrary. That is absolutely the crucial thing.[97]
Richard Allan pointed out that it was very likely
that there would already be parliamentary consideration of whatever
issues were attracting the largest numbers of signatures quite
independently of any petitions procedure—
Whatever is top of their list I bet you will
already be debating that.[98]
112. It would be possible to consider that to be
an argument against providing time specifically to debate petitions,
and to some extent that was Richard Allan's point. But it is equally
the case that a House which is intent on improving its engagement
with the public should be willing to devote some time to debate
issues which the public have indicated are of particular importance
to it. In our view an e-petitions system which includes that possibility
is more likely to attract serious public engagement and, as a
consequence, is more likely to provide an accurate and balanced
reflection of the views of the public.
113. Tom Steinberg suggested that a handful of petitions
should be debated each year for half an hour or an hour. Some
petitions will certainly justify an hour's debate, but others
may be adequately covered in half an hour. Sometimes a group of
related petitions might be debated together. We recommend that
initially there should be three one and a half hour slots each
year (i.e. one each term) in Westminster Hall dedicated to debating
petitions. On each of those occasions one, two or three petitions
or groups of petitions could be debated. We would expect the House
regularly to review the adequacy of this debating time as experience
of e-petitioning develops.
114. We set out in paragraphs 146 to 148 the role
which we believe we should play in providing political oversight
of the implementation of e-petitioning. We recommend that while
we continue to perform that role we, the Procedure Committee,
should initially be responsible for deciding which e-petitions
are debated in a manner similar to the way the Liaison Committee
chooses the select committee reports to be debated in Westminster
Hall.
115. Another option, raised for example by Peter
Riddell,[99] is that
some petitions may be considered by a select committee. We have
noted above that there is little evidence so far that committees
have actively pursued those petitions which under current procedures
are sent to them. But when e-petitions are sent to select committees
not only will they have information on the numbers of signatories
and the analysis of those signatories described in paragraph 92,
but also the petitioners will have been told that their e-petition
has been passed to the committee and that it will be placed on
the committee's agenda. In our view this is likely to lead to
an increased expectation that committees should give e-petitions
serious consideration.
94 Q 4 Back
95
Q 57 Back
96
Q 108 Back
97
Q 139 Back
98
Q 42 Back
99
Q 123 Back
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