3 The shape of a new system
Platform for a joint system
16. The existing Government e-petition system works,
and has proved popular with the public. It is also reasonably
economical to run, and though some development work will be needed
to establish it as a jointly-owned system, using the existing
site as a basis will avoid the need to spend money on designing
a whole new system. A joint system should be based on the existing
Government e-petition site, redesigned and rebranded to show that
it is owned by the House and the Government. To emphasise the
Parliamentary oversight of the system, and in line with the House's
historic role as the principal recipient of public petitions,
it should use the URL epetitions.parliament.uk. There should
also be a clear link from the Parliament website www.parliament.uk to
the e-petition site, including from the pages which explain the
existing paper petitioning system.
17. Changes will need to be made to the way the existing
site works in accordance with the further recommendations we make
below. The Government Digital Service, which runs the site (and
will continue to do so, in collaboration with Parliamentary ICT
(PICT) and its successor Digital Service), is also taking the
opportunity to make other improvements to the site, both of a
technical nature and relating to the way petitioners interact
with the site. We have been shown a "mock-up" of how
the site will look and are impressed with the work which has gone
into it and the results which have been achieved. If the House
assents to the establishment of the system which we recommend,
we will continue to oversee its development on behalf of the House
until the establishment of a Petitions Committee.
Petitions Committee
18. The House of Commons had a Petitions Committee
from the early part of the nineteenth century until 1974. Its
role was to sort out and classify petitions. It could report on
whether petitions were in order under the rules of the House,
but it had no power to look into the merits of petitions and it
could not recommend remedies.[19]
Considerations of petitions procedures since its abolition have
tended to shy away from the re-establishment of a committee of
the House to consider petitions.[20]
More recently, though, there has been a degree of recognition
that the challenges presented by e-petitioning require a committee-based
response.
19. In its 2008 report on e-petitions, our predecessor
Procedure Committee said:
In this inquiry we have considered whether we
should revisit the conclusion of our previous report that the
House should not establish a Petitions Committee. The Hansard
Society, who had recommended the establishment of such a committee
in its memorandum to that inquiry, repeated their recommendation
in their memorandum to this inquiry. The International Teledemocracy
Centre at Napier University argued that
a coordinating body is essential to support Members'
involvement with petitions, including e-petitions, not just in
terms of assisting Members, but to create an even and sustainable
process that the public can have confidence in. We feel that some
sort of Petitions Committee is the logical answer.
We agree that the functions which they identify
are important. We believe that those functions, at least initially,
go together with the provision of political authority and accountability
for the development and implementation of e-petitioning. We do
not, however, agree that the establishment of a new committee
would necessarily be the best solution.[21]
Instead, the Committee concluded that the Procedure
Committee itself should assume the "coordinating" role
envisaged.[22]
20. That conclusion was built on by the Wright Committee,
which concluded in its report in 2009 that
The House cannot be satisfied with its current
procedures for petitions. Whether
electronic or paper-based, they should be scrutinised by some
organ of the House capable of deciding two things: does the matter
merit investigation by the House in some way, and does it now
or in due course merit debate? Experience suggests that if this
is not a duty of a single identified committee then it will not
be done at all.[23]
The Wright Committee was nonetheless "cautious
about recommending a full-scale free-standing Petitions Committee
at this time",[24]
proposing that "the Procedure Committee's terms of reference
be broadened, and its title changed to Procedure and Petitions
Committee, so as to enable it to exercise scrutiny of the petitions
process".[25]
21. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee,
reviewing progress with the Wright recommendations in a report
published in July 2013, concluded that "there is still a
case for the establishment of a petitions committee, as considered
by the Wright Committee".[26]
Meanwhile a report of the Hansard Society, building on discussion
in a seminar convened by the Backbench Business Committee, had
concluded that
The House of Commons should create a Petitions
Committee, supported by staff in a Petitions Office, to engage
with petitioners, moderate the process and provide a single route
for consideration of both paper and online petitions. The objective
should be to provide greater interaction with petitioners and
facilitate multiple possible outcomes for petitions. […]
The Petitions Committee and its staff should respond ambitiously
and flexibly to petitions, embracing the full range of parliamentary
processes for consideration of them.[27]
22. In debate on the motion referring this matter
to us, the then Leader of the House confessed himself "in
favour of some form of petitions committee to act on behalf of
the House, to develop engagement with the public on petitions,
and in the longer term to liaise with Government on e-petitions
and the system."[28]
Giving evidence to us in connection with the inquiry, the current
Leader said he thought there was a "strong case" for
a petitions committee:
I think it is important to have a committee in
some form to highlight to the public that Parliament treats this
seriously, to make sure that government departments respond properly
and fully, and to be able to recommend debates when necessary.[29]
23. Our predecessors had already accepted the case
for a committee of the House to assume a role in the oversight
of the petition system, and others considering the matter since
have reached a similar conclusion. The potential role of such
a committee in ensuring that the House takes petitions seriously,
and the many possible ways in which it could exercise that role,
are clearly set out in the preceding paragraphs. To those arguments
for the establishment of a committee may be added the nature of
the system which the House has asked us to design. In our view,
the creation of a system which is owned jointly by the House and
the Government makes the establishment of a Petitions Committee
essential. Such a committee will not only deal with petitions
on behalf of the House, but it will also deal with the Government
on behalf of the House, ensuring that the interests both of the
House and of the public are protected and that the Government
does not again foist upon the House and the public a system which
fails to communicate clearly and accurately with petitioners or
to manage their expectations of the process effectively, as has
been the case with the existing system.[30]
ROLE OF THE COMMITTEE
24. We are persuaded that, in a jointly-owned
system, there should be a House of Commons Petitions Committee
charged with oversight of the e-petitioning system on behalf of
the House, liaising with the Government. The Committee should
also assume responsibility for oversight of the paper petitioning
system in the House of Commons. The Committee should be able
to consider petitions submitted by either means, and as appropriate,
and at its discretion:
· correspond with petitioners on their petition;
· call petitioners for oral evidence;
· refer a petition to the relevant select
committee (without obligation on that committee to take any further
action);
· seek further information from the Government,
orally or in writing, on the subject of a petition; and
· put forward petitions for debate.[31]
25. The Petitions Committee will decide for itself
which petitions merit further action, and what action is appropriate
in each case. It may decide to use thresholds for signatures to
trigger certain action, such as putting forward a petition for
debate, at its discretion. We expect the Petitions Committee to
take the well-established and reasonably well-understood existing
threshold of 100,000 signatures for a petition to be considered
for debate in the House as a starting-point; but there may be
occasions when a debate is not appropriate—such as when
a debate has already taken place in the House on the subject—and
the Petitions Committee may decide that a petition which has not
reached that 100,000 threshold is nonetheless worthy of a debate
in the House. The Committee might also decide to use signature
thresholds as an indicator of whether other potential action—such
as corresponding with or taking oral evidence from the petitioners—would
be appropriate in a particular case; but again it need not bind
itself to do so. The advantage of the establishment of a committee
is that it will be able to exercise its judgement on whether a
petition is worthy of further action, based not only on the number
of people who have signed it but on the content of the petition
itself. As the then Clerk of the House told us,
I think it is easy to get fazed by the 100,000,
the 10,000, the 25,000 or whatever. If you have a threshold for
further action—whether it is a debate or Government observations—of
100,000, it becomes a numbers game, not forgetting, of course,
that it is much easier to rack up numbers for an e-petition than
it is for people signing sheets of paper. Sheer numbers, I think,
have their place, but if e-petitions are to be catered for, I
think the other end of the scale needs to be catered for as well.
If you have 200,000 people signing an e-petition condemning the
annexation of Crimea, for example, in a sense that is a no-brainer—it
may be quite an easy target to hit—but if you have Mrs Smith,
one individual, who is having her life made a misery by some bizarre
interpretation of a rule by officialdom, I see her as very much
having equal rights in this.[32]
CHAIRING AND MEMBERSHIP
26. We consider that a committee charged with
such responsibilities on behalf of the House should have a chair
elected by the whole House and members elected by their parties,
as with the majority of existing select committees. It will
be important that such a committee both be and be seen to be independent
and impartial in the exercise of its judgement. The appointment
or choice of a chair or members based on the old system of patronage
would not inspire the confidence in the petitioning system either
inside or outside the House which will be crucial if the committee
is to perform its task effectively.
NEW COMMITTEE, OR ALLOCATE THE RESPONSIBILITIES
TO AN EXISTING COMMITTEE?
27. Our conclusion about chairing and membership
leaves open the question of whether there should be a new committee
established as a Petitions Committee, or whether the task should
be taken on by an existing committee, or a sub-committee of an
existing committee. As the Leader of the House told us, "One
thing we would have to do if a standalone petitions committee
were created, is to bear in mind that we cannot inflate indefinitely
the number of committees".[33]
Whilst the staff resources necessary to support the responsibilities
which we have set out for a petitions committee would be the same
whether a stand-alone committee were established or the task given
to an existing committee, if the number of committees continues
to increase, it will be increasingly difficult to find the Member
resources necessary for them to function effectively. If a new
Committee is established, that Committee should replace an existing
committee, so that its establishment does not lead to an increase
in the overall number of select committees.
28. The alternatives to a stand-alone Petitions Committee
suggested to us were for the task to be allocated either to the
Backbench Business Committee, or to ourselves, the Procedure Committee.[34]
Of those two alternatives, we consider that it would be better
for the task to be given to us—as proposed in our predecessors'
report on e-petitions in the last Parliament and as suggested
by the Wright Committee—than to the Backbench Business Committee.
The role as we envisage it goes much further than the allocation
of debating time for petitions and, as the Chair of that committee
told us, that does not fit at all well with the current role of
the Backbench Business Committee.[35]
29. Our preference, however, is for a separate
committee to be set up which can focus exclusively on the significant
task of considering and responding to petitions. That is important
not only from the point of view of the committee itself, which
is likely to function most effectively if it has a single clear
and identifiable role, but also from the point of view of the
petitioning public. The Leader of the House told us that he tended
to the view that
[…] there needs to be an identifiable committee
for this purpose. From whatever group it is drawn or from whatever
other committee or panel it is made up, people need to be able
to see. We should be able to say on the relevant website there
is a petitions committee there—a group of Members of Parliament
across parties who are going to be able to look at this petition
to make sure the Government responds, to refer it to a debate
if necessary […][36]
We consider that the best way to achieve the visibility
to the petitioning public of a committee with the role we envisage
for it will be to establish a separate Petitions Committee.
RELATIONSHIP OF THE COMMITTEE WITH
OTHER COMMITTEES AND WITH THE GOVERNMENT
30. The Leader of the House also drew attention to
another concern about the establishment of a Petitions Committee.
He told us
[…] I think we would have to make sure that
it was not taking over the role of any other committees. There
would have to be some demarcation to ensure it was not the committee
inquiring into every subject that was raised in a petition […][37]
We agree: it will be important that the Petitions
Committee focuses on its role of enabling petitioners' concerns
to be heard by the House and ensuring that the Government responds
appropriately, and does not usurp the investigative role of the
departmental select committees. To that end, we have agreed with
the Government a draft Memorandum of Understanding between the
Government and the Petitions Committee which sets out how the
system will work: it is reproduced in the Annex. That memorandum
makes clear that the Government will seek to meet reasonable requests
for information from the Committee in relation to petitions; but
that the committee will only seek oral evidence from Ministers
on petitions in exceptional circumstances, for example in the
event of a failure to respond to requests for written information
or to fulfil an undertaking made in response to a petition. It
will be for the Petitions Committee to decide for itself how it
wishes to fulfil its responsibilities, but if the House agrees
with this report, it will be indicating that it would expect both
the committee and the Government to act within the terms of the
memorandum which has been agreed.
31. The committee's relationship with other select
committees will also be important. We have recommended above that
the Petitions Committee have the ability to refer a petition to
the relevant select committee; but also that there will be no
obligation on that other committee to take any action. It will
be for that committee to decide what the appropriate response
will be. As the Liaison Committee has commented, "Select
committees already receive petitions presented to the House, and
use them to inform current business; not infrequently the subject-matter
of a petition will coincide with issues the committee is already
investigating."[38]
The Liaison Committee reported in respect of the proposal of the
Wright Committee to give the Procedure Committee a similar role
that it was "confident that the Procedure Committee could
exercise appropriate discretion";[39]
we trust that it will have equal confidence in a new Petitions
Committee. We would expect the chair of the Petitions Committee
to be a member of the Liaison Committee, which should assist in
resolving any difficulties.
STAFF OF THE COMMITTEE
32. The Petitions Committee should be supported by
a staff team with responsibility for:
· moderating e-petitions, assisted as necessary
by Government officials;
· advising and supporting the Committee
in its examination of petitions submitted;
· advising petitioners on how to petition
and assisting them with the process;
· keeping petitioners and signatories who
have opted in to receiving further information informed of the
progress of their petition, and (subject to the volume of petitions
received and the resources available) informing them of other
Parliamentary developments or activity touching the subject of
their petition, and making such information available on the e-petitions
website.
We have more to say about the role of that staff
team in moderating petitions, advising and assisting petitioners
and providing information on Parliamentary developments and activity
below.
Engagement with petitioners and
potential petitioners
33. The case for better engagement with petitioners
was made very clearly in a number of responses from Natascha Engel,
Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, when she gave evidence
to our inquiry on debates on Government e-petitions in 2011:
[…] we need to do the public engagement
bit better. At the moment the engagement is not engagement as
I would understand it; it is very one-sided. […] We should
start by saying, "How can we better do that?" I think
by engaging people at the point at which they want to table a
petition would be a better way round. Have a unit, have somebody
who takes people step by step through how to do it, what it is
they are trying to achieve, whether this is the best way of doing
it, and then the possible consequences of putting your signature
on an e-petition. Possibly it is not to change the law; possibly
it is. If it is to advance a campaign, then maybe putting an e-petition
to a Select Committee, for example, might be a better way to do
it. […][40]
If we are engaging people, engagement to me is
a two-way process. We have e-petitions and we have parliamentarians,
and if we are having a dialogue about how things work and how
best to achieve things, when constituents come and see us in surgeries,
we do not automatically just take on and do exactly what they
say. We take them through how the system works and then discuss
with them the best way of pursuing or dealing with their issue.
It is a dialogue […][41]
34. A report by the Hansard Society on e-petitions,
which drew on the results of a seminar facilitated by our colleagues
on the Backbench Business Committee, makes the same point:
An e-petition is certainly a way to get an issue
on to or higher up on the political agenda; it is a means to attract
public and media attention to the issue and can serve a useful
'fire-alarm' function, providing citizens with an opportunity
to air their views on a national platform. If all that is sought
is a 'finger in the wind' exercise to determine the depth of public
feeling on a range of issues then the system meets this test.
But it is not, in its current form, a means to empower them through
greater engagement in the political and specifically parliamentary
process and it affords only limited opportunity for deliberation
on the issues raised.
The government claims that the website 'has connected
with a remarkable number and range of people - for many of whom,
this may have been their first experience of engaging with Parliament
and Government.' But the way the system currently works means
that the engagement that takes place is primarily with the website
rather than with government and Parliament. Consequently petitioners
do not learn anything about how Parliament works.[42]
35. The Hansard Society report makes the following
recommendation:
Given the volume of e-petitions submitted each
week it is not reasonable to believe that staff at Westminster
could replicate the dedicated, personal engagement with individual
petitioners undertaken in the devolved legislatures at the beginning
of each petitioning process. However, a dedicated team of staff
in a new Petitions Office could certainly help to enhance the
approach to moderation, improve the communication with petitioners,
and signpost petitions that are not eligible for consideration
by the House of Commons elsewhere (e.g. to the National Assembly
for Wales, the Scottish Parliament, local government or another
public body). At present, e-petitions whose subject matter is
not the responsibility of a government department are simply rejected;
officials do not provide any advice or information to the petitioners
to help them direct their concerns to the relevant institution.
A Petitions Office could offer such enhanced support.[43]
36. Catherine Bochel, a lecturer at the University
of Lincoln who has been undertaking research into petitions systems
in the UK for a number of years, including many interviews with
petitioners, provided us with a little more detail about how that
might work and the outcomes which might result:
First, I think you need a clear statement of
purpose on the website: "If you submit a petition to this
system, you can get this, this and this". Then if people
submit a petition and they get that or some of that, then they
might feel that is okay. If they have the opportunity to speak
to a clerk, to e-mail somebody to answer their questions, if there
is information on the website that tells them about the process,
then they are more likely to feel they are being treated with
respect. […][44]
When you submit a petition, it needs to be clear
that it is not just about getting what you asked for at the end
of the day. There are a whole series of other outcomes, all the
sorts of things that have been mentioned here today. Getting your
petition published on the website is an outcome in itself, because
it is promoting it to a wider audience, raising its profile, and
perhaps you will get some additional publicity for that, but that
is an outcome in itself. All these other things that have been
mentioned are outcomes. I have interviewed petitioners and said
to them, "Did you get what you wanted?" and some of
them will say to me, "No, I didn't get what I wanted or what
I started out asking for, but I got other things and I am satisfied
with that". It is important that, when they submit a petition,
petitioners can see that it is not just about getting what you
have asked for. There are other things you can achieve, too, and
that is important.[45]
37. In the debate on the motion referring the matter
to us, the then Leader of the House expressed the hope that a
new system could provide "better service and support for
petitioners".[46]
Written evidence from Cristina Leston-Bandeira, a senior lecturer
at the University of Hull, argued that
One of the most important aspects to consider
in setting up the new petitions system is the way it provides
information to citizens. One of the key criteria for effective
parliamentary petition systems is the clarity, usefulness and
transparency of the information given to the petitioner. The new
system should be supported by a website that explains clearly
and in an engaging manner (use of videos, examples, smart web
design, integration with social media, etc.) not only the process
to submit the petition, but also the process the petition will
undergo for its consideration. The site can be used to clarify
what the institution of parliament can realistically do and how
the issue being raised in the petition may be dealt with.[47]
38. Natascha Engel, giving evidence to us again on
this inquiry, told us
[…] this is about how do individuals engage
with Parliament so that every single time somebody signs either
a paper petition or an e-petition, they should learn something
about how this place works and learn about how better to influence
what it is that we do.[48]
39. We consider that the Hansard Society's suggestion
of a "dedicated team of staff in a new Petitions Office [enhancing]
the approach to moderation, improv[ing] communication with petitioners,
and signpost[ing] petitions that are not eligible for consideration
by the House of Commons elsewhere" offers the most practical
and attractive picture of how engagement with petitioners and
prospective petitioners could be improved in this new system.
Together with the rebranding and redesigning of the e-petition
website, the establishment of a Petitions Committee with its own
team of staff could vastly improve the information which is available
to petitioners about what the House of Commons does and the many
ways in which Members of Parliament use the opportunities the
House offers them to respond to the public's concerns.
40. There is much that Petitions Committee staff
could do to enhance the information available to petitioners and
prospective signatories to petitions once a petition has been
submitted. In Figures 1 and 2 we reproduce examples we have been
shown of the kind of work which might be done. In these examples
links are provided to relevant Parliamentary material in emails
informing a petitioner that his petition has reached 10,000 signatures
and has therefore received a response from the Government, and
that it has been debated after reaching 100,000 signatures; such
links could equally be provided in the email inviting a signatory
to confirm their support for a petition, or with the text of a
petition on the site. It will in due course be for the Petitions
Committee itself, in the light of the resources available to it,
to decide how far this work goes; but the potential is there,
we believe, for the establishment of a new system overseen by
a Petitions Committee to improve significantly the House's engagement
with petitioners and prospective petitioners.
MEMBER INVOLVEMENT
41. The submission of an e-petition will not require
the intervention of a Member of Parliament in the way that the
paper petitioning system does. The essence of the system which
has already been set up, and on which our proposed system is therefore
based, is one of direct access to the institution to which the
petition is directed, and we do not think it would be appropriate
to retreat from that. Nor, given our recommendation of the establishment
of a Petitions Committee, do we think it is necessary to do so
in order to ensure the ownership of the system by Members of Parliament.
42. Nonetheless we consider that there would be considerable
merit in the Petitions Committee establishing a system of informing
Members about some or all of the petitions submitted by their
constituents. Members might be told, for example, about petitions
originating from or attracting a certain number of signatories
from their constituency, or relating to a specific issue in the
constituency, or petitions in either of those categories on which
the Committee had decided to take further action. We were told
that it should also be possible to make available aggregate information
about the signatories to a petition (for example in the form of
postcode "heat maps"), which is likely to be of interest
not only to Members but also to the general public.[49]
43. We also consider that the e-petition site should
offer creators and signatories of e-petitions a means of notifying
their Member of Parliament that they had signed a petition. There
are a number of ways in which that might be done. For example,
a link could be provided on the site once a visitor had signed
a petition saying Contact your MP to let them know you have
signed this petition, which would automatically open an email
to the petitioner's constituency MP, based on the postcode they
have entered as part of the signing process. Or a system could
be established whereby petition signatories would be able to opt
in to their email address being made available to their constituency
MP, with lists of those who had done so, broken down by petition
signed, being provided to MPs who request them on, say, a weekly
basis. If the House approves the system we propose in this report,
we will pursue the provision of these options in the redesigned
e-petition site.
Moderation of e-petitions
44. The current e-petition system is moderated by
officials of Government departments. Prospective petitioners must
indicate when they submit an e-petition which department they
think is responsible for the subject matter of the petition. The
text of the petition is then forwarded to officials in that department,
who consider whether it complies with the terms and conditions.
If it does, it is published and opened for signature. If it does
not, the prospective petitioner is informed of the reason or reasons
why it has been rejected. The full text of rejected petitions
is published on the site, unless the content is illegal or offensive.[50]
45. We recommend that moderation of the jointly-owned
system—that is, examination of e-petitions submitted to
ensure that they comply with the terms and conditions of the site—should
be carried out by Petitions Committee staff, advised as necessary
by officials of Government departments. This will represent
a significant transfer of responsibility—and therefore cost—from
the Government to the House; but we consider it necessary to ensure
that the House retains control of the petitions which are presented
to it, not least because of the considerations of Parliamentary
privilege which we discuss below. It is also appropriate that
moderation of petitions should be carried out by the same team
which is responsible for advising and supporting petitioners in
the way we discuss above.
46. We would expect the Petitions Committee to monitor
the way in which moderation was being conducted by Petitions Committee
staff and ensure that it was being done appropriately. The Committee
would, for example, have full access to the text of all rejected
e-petitions.
THRESHOLD FOR PUBLICATION
47. It was suggested to us that we might consider
setting a threshold for the number of supporters of an e-petition
before it will be published and opened for signature.[51]
Around one in five of the e-petitions which have been submitted
through the current site have attracted fewer than three signatures,
and as many as 42% fewer than six.
48. Since the purpose of an e-petition is to express
a collective, rather than an individual, view on a particular
matter, we agree that it would be appropriate to require a prospective
petitioner to demonstrate a degree of support for his or her petition
before it will be published and opened for signature on the site.
Requiring an e-petition to attract a certain number of supporters
before it is published has the additional advantage of reducing
the burden of moderation, since it is only necessary to examine
an e-petition for compliance with the terms and conditions if
it is going to be published. That will leave more resources available
to engage with those bringing forward well-supported petitions,
and to ensure that as much information as possible is made available
on the e-petitions website about what Parliament is doing in relation
to the concerns raised. We recommend that an e-petition be
required to attract at least five signatures in addition to its
creator before it will be submitted for moderation (and thereafter
publication). This can be done relatively simply through the
site by allowing the petition creator to enter a number of e-mail
addresses of those he or she thinks support the petition; those
people will then be automatically e-mailed through the system
and invited to confirm—by clicking a link in the e-mail,
exactly as if they had gone to the site to sign a published e-petition—that
they support it. Only when at least five people have done so will
the text of the e-petition be forwarded for moderation.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR THE SUBMISSION
OF AN E-PETITION
49. We have considered the terms and conditions of
the current e-petition site and are broadly content with them.
We have no desire to make the collaborative system any more restrictive
than is necessary. The terms and conditions of the site which
we consider appropriate to a jointly-owned system are published
in the Annex to this report.
50. We recommend only one significant change to the
existing terms and conditions which is not a straightforward consequence
of the transition to a jointly-owned system. That is that petitioners
should be required to include a clear statement of the action
which they want the Government, or the House, to take as a result
of their petition. This change was recommended to us by those
running the existing system and appears to be an obvious way of
focussing a petition and ensuring that the Government and/or the
House respond appropriately. As we note above, there is already
an equivalent requirement for public petitions to the House submitted
through the existing paper petition system.[52]
Parliamentary privilege
51. Notwithstanding our desire not to restrict access
to it, in a Parliamentary system there is an additional consideration
which means that particular care will need to be taken in the
moderation of prospective petitions. That is the potential scope
of Parliamentary privilege applying to such petitions. The House
will wish to satisfy itself that procedures are in place to ensure
that no material is published which would be inappropriately protected
from court action as result of the application of Parliamentary
privilege.
52. Our assessment of how Parliamentary privilege
would apply to the system we propose is as follows. This is a
summary of how the system would work:
· A petitioner submits a petition to the
site.
· The petitioner provides at least four
additional e-mail addresses of people who support the petition.
· At least five of those people confirm
that they support the petition.
· The petition is forwarded to Petitions
Committee staff for moderation.
· Petitions Committee staff will consider
the petition and assess whether it meets the terms and conditions
set out on the site.
· If the petition meets the terms and conditions,
it will be opened for signature, and will remain open for a period
of six months.
· If the petition does not meet the terms
and conditions, an e-mail will be sent to the petition creator
informing them of the fact.
· Petitions which meet the terms and conditions
will be considered by the Petitions Committee.
· Following closure of the petition for
signature, the petition will be presented formally to the House.
53. A petition should not be privileged simply by
virtue of having been approved by Petitions Committee staff. An
analogy may be drawn with the role of the Clerk of Public Petitions
in respect of the existing paper petition system. She may approve
the wording of a proposed petition to the House, which is then
prepared and circulated by the petitioner to collect signatures
before being presented to the House. There is no implication that
the petition is privileged whilst it is being circulated for signatures
to be collected.
54. Neither should the fact that the House is publishing
the petition, and providing the means by which signatures may
be collected, mean that an e-petition would be privileged at this
stage. The House publishes much material on its website (and indeed
elsewhere) which is not a proceeding in Parliament and which is
not therefore privileged.
55. The point at which an e-petition became a proceeding
in Parliament would be the point at which it is considered by
the Petitions Committee itself. The Petitions Committee should
be given the explicit task, in its Standing Order, of considering
whether an e-petition is fit for presentation to the House. Presentation
to the House would not take place until later in the process,
at the end of the six-month signature period on the e-petition
site.[53] Once the Petitions
Committee had considered the petition and determined that it considered
it fit for presentation to the House, it should constitute a proceeding
in Parliament.
56. It is possible though that a petition published
on an e-petition site endorsed and established by the House—as
we hope this one will be—would attract the more limited
protection of the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840. Petitions Committee
staff will need to exercise care in the moderation of petitions
to ensure that no potentially actionable material is published
in an e-petition without the explicit authority of the Petitions
Committee itself. Two things are worth bearing in mind here:
· House staff have long experience in assessing
material provided by members of the public to ensure anything
potentially actionable is not published under the House's auspices.
This experience includes not only evidence to select committees—where
in difficult cases the committee itself will be invited to consider
whether a submission should be accepted or not—but also
web fora and the like, where the material concerned is not necessarily
ever expected to constitute a formal submission to a committee.
· The terms and conditions have been couched
in such a way as to ensure that any potentially actionable material
should be immediately ruled out.
57. Cases in which a petition was accepted by Petitions
Committee staff and published for signature, but later rejected
by the Committee itself, might be expected to be rare. Nonetheless
it could happen. In all cases there would in the process be the
opportunity for elected Members to exercise the right which the
House has asserted for itself "to judge and determine, touching
the nature and matter of […] petitions, how far they are
fit and unfit to be received".[54]
That might include, for example, where there were active proceedings
in the courts on the matters on which a petition touched.
Standing Order No. 48
58. Standing Order No. 48 (Recommendation from Crown
required on application relating to public money) provides that
"This House will receive no petition for any sum relating
to public service […] unless recommended from the Crown."
This rule derives from the principle that no charge on public
funds or on the people can be incurred except on the initiative
of the Crown.[55]
59. On a strict construction, this standing order
might appear to rule out the presentation to the House of any
e-petition which would involve higher public spending on public
services. In practice, as Erskine May records, "petitions
seeking a change of policy, or asking for legislation, which might
incidentally involve public expenditure […] are usually acceptable".[56]
In considering how this standing order should be applied to e-petitions,
it will also be important to consider the nature and context of
the system. The rule expressed in SO No. 48 is aimed at petitions
addressed specifically to the House and requesting action directly
from it. Clearly a petition to the House requesting a specific
grant of public money would, if not recommended by the Crown,
breach the principle relating to the incursion of charges on public
funds mentioned above. The e-petition site, on the other hand,
as we noted earlier in this report, is intended to allow the public
"to petition the House of Commons and press for action from
Government".[57]
An e-petition asking the Government (but not the House) to increase
expenditure on some aspect of public service would not breach
that principle and we see no reason why the House should not receive
it.
Duration on the site
60. Currently, an e-petition remains open for signature
on the site for twelve months from the date of its creation. We
recommend that the period for which a petition should be open
for signature on the new site should be six months. Professor
Margetts showed us figures demonstrating that, with very few exceptions,
an e-petition which is going to attract a significant number of
signatures will do so within a matter of days, if not hours.[58]
Reducing the period for which an e-petition remains open is therefore
unlikely to have a significant effect on its ability to gather
support, and will help to ensure that the site remains focussed
on matters of current concern to the public.
Presentation to the House
61. When an e-petition reaches the end of its time
open for signature on the site, we consider that it would be appropriate
for it to be presented to the House, and entered on the formal
record of its proceedings. For this to occur it will not be necessary
for an e-petition to be presented on the floor of the House in
the same way as a public petition brought through the paper petitioning
system; nor for the full text of the petition to be republished,
since arrangements will be made for an archive to be kept of the
electronic version of all published e-petitions. Instead, we
recommend that, once it is closed for signature, the title of
each e-petition be recorded in a list in the Votes and Proceedings
(or elsewhere in the formal record of House proceedings), together
with the number of signatures it has attracted.
62. Should a Member wish to pursue it, the paper
petition system will enable the formal presentation of the subject
of an e-petition on the floor of the House. Although, as we note
above, an e-petition may not meet the rules for paper petitions,
in practice—as our predecessor committee noted in a report
on public petitions in 2004—the same goes for many public
petitions received by Members.[59]
It is usually a relatively straightforward task for the petition
to be redrafted so that it conforms to the rules for paper petitions.
Whilst this petition is not the one which has attracted signatures
on the e-petition site, it is unlikely that the chair would object
to a Member drawing attention, when presenting such a petition,
to the number of signatures attracted by an e-petition in similar
terms. In practice this is what happens in the case of a substantial
proportion of the paper petitions presented to the House.
Debates on petitions
63. At present, the Backbench Business Committee
is responsible for determining whether, and if so where, an e-petition
referred to it by the Leader of the House once it has attained
100,000 signatures is debated by the House. BBCom decides whether
a debate should take place in Westminster Hall on a Monday afternoon,
or whether some of the time allocated for backbench business on
the floor of the House or on Thursdays in Westminster Hall should
be used for debate on the subject raised by the e-petition.
64. We recommend that the Petitions Committee
should assume responsibility from BBCom for determining debates
on petitions in Westminster Hall. The Chair of BBCom has explained
to us how that responsibility never really sat well with her committee:[60]
the Petitions Committee, on the other hand, should consider it
central to its responsibility to decide whether a petition—whether
an e-petition or a petition presented through the traditional
paper route—should be debated by the House. The Petitions
Committee should not, however, be able to cut across the existing
responsibility of the Backbench Business Committee to decide that
a petition should be debated other than in the dedicated slot
for petition debates in Westminster Hall. If the Petitions
Committee decides that a petition deserves a debate on the floor
of the House, it would take that request to the Backbench Business
Committee, which could (but would not be obliged to) allocate
backbench time for it. If BBCom were unable to prioritise
a debate on the petition over the matters brought before it by
other Members, it would be for the Petitions Committee to decide
whether to have the matter debated in Westminster Hall, or whether
to return to BBCom with a renewed request at a time which it judged
more propitious.
65. The Petitions Committee could also recommend
that a petition be "tagged" to a debate taking place
on the floor of the House or in Westminster Hall (subject to the
agreement of the Member in charge of that debate).
66. As we have noted above, it would be for the Petitions
Committee to judge the extent to which the number of signatures
should affect its decision about whether a petition should be
debated.[61] We would
expect the number of signatures to be a very significant factor
in the Committee's decision, but not necessarily determinative
in cases where other factors—such as a debate on the subject
having already taken place, or the salience of the subject matter—weigh
heavier in the Committee's judgement.
Paper petitions
67. The traditional system of petitioning the House—by
means of paper petitions—is of very long standing, and has
evolved through time and a number of examinations by our predecessor
Procedure Committees and others. We have considered carefully
the implications of the introduction of a means of petitioning
the House electronically for the paper petitioning system, especially
given that the rules for e-petitions are to be to some degree
less stringent than those for paper petitions.
68. We have concluded that the rules and procedures
for paper petitions should remain as they are. The e-petition
system which we recommend here is designed to build on the existing
Government system: it will enable people to petition the House
electronically, but its chief merit will be in enabling the House
to hear and respond to petitions pressing for action from the
Government. The paper petition system, on the other hand, is designed
specifically for petitions addressed to the House of Commons.
As such it is a route directly to the floor of the House, via
a particular Member of Parliament—usually the lead petitioner's
constituency MP—and retains that important link with an
individual Member which we have concluded is not appropriate for
the "collaborative" jointly-owned House and Government
e-petition system which the House has asked us to design. We think
those features of the paper petitioning system are valuable and
worth retaining notwithstanding the introduction of a new way
of petitioning the House.
69. The only change which we recommend is the ability
of the Petitions Committee to consider paper petitions, and take
action on them as it considers appropriate, alongside petitions
coming through the e-petition system. As a continued incentive
to the presentation of paper petitions, we recommend that the
Government should retain its practice of responding to every paper
petition presented to the House (as opposed to the 10,000
signature threshold for a Government response to an e-petition).
Since every paper petition will be subject to consideration by
the Petitions Committee, however, we recommend that the requirement
that all paper petitions should be referred to the relevant select
committee, and formally placed on their agenda, should be removed.
The Liaison Committee has commented that "it does not
appear that many committees take specific action in response to
petitions" as a result of this requirement.[62]
As we note above, it will be open to the Petitions Committee to
draw the attention of a select committee to any petition it considers
appropriate: we hope that such improved targeting of the referral
of petitions to select committees might encourage those committees
to take them up.
70. We expect the Petitions Committee to maintain
oversight of the paper petitioning system as well as the e-petition
system, and to recommend any changes to the paper petitioning
system which might appear to it to be necessary in the light of
experience of running alongside a new e-petition system.
19 Public Petitions and Early Day Motions, Ev
16. Back
20
See, for example, Public Petitions and Early Day Motions,
para 27. Back
21
e-Petitions, para 147. Back
22
e-Petitions, para 148. Back
23
Rebuilding the House, para 260. Back
24
Rebuilding the House, para 261. Back
25
Rebuilding the House, para 263. Back
26
Revisiting Rebuilding the House: the impact of the Wright reforms,
para 133. Back
27
Hansard Society, What next for e-petitions? (2012), pp
19, 20. Back
28
HC Deb, 8 May 2014, col 313. Back
29
Q97 Back
30
Debates on Government e-Petitions, para 5. Back
31
See para 63ff. below. Back
32
Q10 Back
33
Q98 Back
34
Q98 Back
35
Q72 Back
36
Q99 Back
37
Q97 Back
38
Liaison Committee, First Report of Session 2009-10, Rebuilding
the House: Select Committee Issues, HC 272, para 38. Back
39
Rebuilding the House: Select Committee Issues, para 38.
Back
40
Debates on Government e-Petitions, Q22. Back
41
Debates on Government e-Petitions, Q29. Back
42
What next for e-petitions?, p 9. Back
43
What next for e-petitions?, p 20. Back
44
Q26 Back
45
Q43 Back
46
HC Deb, 8 May 2014, col 313. Back
47
Written evidence from Cristina Leston-Bandeira, p 2. Back
48
Q56 Back
49
See Q36 and slide "Petition Signatures by Postcode district"
in written evidence from Professor Helen Margetts. Back
50
HM Government, E-petitions: 'Terms and conditions', accessed 28
November 2014. Back
51
Q21 (and see written evidence from Professor Helen Margetts),
Qq31-33; Letter from the Leader of the House, E-petitions:
Outline Proposals. Back
52
Para 13. Back
53
See para 61. Back
54
Quoted in Erskine May's Treatise on The Law, Privileges, Proceedings
and Usage of Parliament, 24th ed. (2011) (hereafter
"May"), p.483. Back
55
May, p. 716 Back
56
May, p. 486 Back
57
Para 13. Back
58
Q21: see slide "Most petitions fail" in written evidence
from Professor Helen Margetts. Back
59
Procedure Committee, Fifth Report of Session 2003-04, Public
petitions, HC 1248, para 7. Back
60
Q77 Back
61
Para 25 Back
62
Liaison Committee, Second Report of Session 2009-10, The Work
of Committees in Session 2008-09, para 127. Back
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