2 A "collaborative" system?
10. Proposing the motion debated in the House on
8 May 2014, the then Leader of the House said "I want Parliament
to share in the ownership of a modern e-petitions system that
allows people to petition their Parliament, engage their elected
representatives and, where appropriate, get a response from their
Government […] This is […] a paving motion, which will
allow the House to agree on the principle that a new system should
be jointly owned and run by the Government and the House of Commons."[10]
11. Notwithstanding the unanimous agreement of the
House to the motion, we acknowledge that there is concern about
the notion of a system "jointly owned and run by the Government
and the House of Commons". Graham Allen, Chair of the Political
and Constitutional Affairs Committee, tabled an amendment to the
motion proposing that "the House of Commons should have its
own e-petitions website, administered and controlled by this House
and separate from that of the Government".[11]
The Political and Constitutional Affairs Committee itself argued
in a report published in July 2013 that "There is too much
confusion between the roles of Government and Parliament […]
We believe that there must be a clear separation between petitions
intended to prompt action by Government and petitions aimed at
Parliament."[12]
Mr Allen expanded on his concerns in oral evidence to us, saying
[…] from my point of view, Parliament should
have its own separate independent petitioning system. There is
hundreds of years of precedent for this. We, as Members of Parliament,
in our little puny way, raise our own petitions and put them to
the Floor of the House and we all stand on our hind legs […]
before the Adjournment debate and can make a petition and can
put something to the House when we decide—not that it has
been sent our way by Government, but when we decide—and
that is really in a sense the other half of what I would want
to say, would be about Parliament itself taking its role seriously
and having Members of Parliament acting as independent, elected
people rather than what we have at the moment if we accept this
proposal, which will be a surrogate and a fall guy for a lot of
stuff that is sent the way of the Executive, and which, frankly,
we are powerless to change and will just damage our reputation.[13]
12. Nonetheless there are important arguments in
favour of the establishment of a joint system. Even the Political
and Constitutional Affairs Committee noted "the expectation
of most petitioners […] that their petition to Parliament,
if it is supported by large numbers of people, will result in
action by the Government, or at least that it will receive a response
from Government".[14]
In the 8 May debate the then Leader of the House, responding to
Mr Allen's amendment, commented "I cannot imagine what the
public would make of our establishing two competing and overlapping
e-petition systems."[15]
The merits from a petitioner's point of view of a single system
were also recognised by the panel of petitioning experts from
whom we took evidence:
Q50 Chair: You are of the view that the
e-petition system should reside in one place? There should not
be a No. 10 prime ministerial system and a House of Commons system?
What we need is a single system that is easy to access and easily
navigable?
Catherine Bochel: I think it would
be much better to have a single system in one place. It would
be much less confusing for people.
Professor Margetts: Yes, a single
system.
Dr Fox: I agree. I agree with that.
13. It is reasonable for the House to ask why it
should concern itself with petitions directed not to the House,
but to Government. The first rule of a public petition submitted
through the existing paper petition system is that it should address
the House directly; amongst the House's other rules for paper
petitions is that they must make a clear request to the House
which is within the House's power to grant.[16]
Petitions submitted to a collaborative system allowing the public
"to petition the House of Commons and press for action
from Government" (our emphasis) will not necessarily
meet those two fundamental rules.
14. The answer to that objection was provided by
the Leader of the House in oral evidence to us:
I think that most people when they sign a petition
on a particular issue are not distinguishing between Government
and Parliament. They are looking for Parliament to discuss it
and Government to do something about it, and the two are connected.
In our system, they are connected since the Government sits in
Parliament. We do not have a separation of executive and legislature,
so the voters who think that are right partially. They should
not have to raise two petitions, one to go to Ministers and one
to go to Parliament. We ought to be capable of devising a system
[…] which puts pressure on a Government to respond, to say
what they are going to do about a particular issue, but also draws
attention to the issue in Parliament.[17]
15. Whilst we regret the failure to establish the
House of Commons e-petition system which our predecessors recommended
in 2008, given where we are now—and in particular the link
between the existing Government e-petition site and debates in
the House, which is now well-established in the minds of the public—we
do not consider that it would be sensible to set up a separate
House system. Rather, we believe that a better way for the House
now to achieve the objective our predecessors set out of "reinforc[ing]
[its] historic role as the proper and principal recipient of public
petitions"[18]
will be for ownership of a joint system to be shared between the
Government and a re-established Petitions Committee, on behalf
of the House. We have more to say about the establishment
and role of a Petitions Committee below.
10 HC Deb, 8 May 2014, col 312. Back
11
House of Commons Order Paper OP No. 158, 8 May 2014, p 8. Back
12
Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Third Report of
Session 2013-14, Revisiting Rebuilding the House: the impact
of the Wright reforms, HC 82, paras 130, 132. Back
13
Q52 Back
14
Revisiting Rebuilding the House: the impact of the Wright reforms,
para 131. Back
15
HC Deb, 8 May 2014, col 313. Back
16
House of Commons, 'Public petitions to the House of Commons',
accessed 28 November 2014. Back
17
Q96 Back
18
e-Petitions, para 34. Back
|
