Making the most of parliamentary ePetitions

A more effective parliamentary petitions system has been promised as part of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition 'programme for government'.

The pledge is that:

"We will ensure that any petition that secures 100,000 signatures will be eligible for formal debate in Parliament. The petition with the most signatures will enable members of the public to table a bill eligible to be voted on in Parliament."

In this trilogy of posts, I'll be looking at how Westminster has previously approached the issue of ePetitions, an example of how not specify a petitions mechanism and a lesson in how to effectively integrate petitions into a parliamentary system.

In March 2008 the Commons procedure committee first put forward its proposals on the issue, saying it should have the following features:

• ePetitions can be submitted via the parliamentary website (sample webpages are available here).
• If they comply with the House's rules, the petitioner's constituency MP will be asked to act as facilitator.
• The ePetition is then posted on the parliamentary website for a set period. Others may add their names to it.
• At the end of the period, it is closed. Members will be able to indicate support for it.
• It is then presented to the House, either electronically or on the floor.
• Petitioners and signatories may opt in to receive updates on the progress of the ePetition and/or up to two emails from their constituency MP.
• ePetitions will be printed in Hansard and sent to select committees and may be considered by them.
• The government will normally be expected to reply within two months of presentation.
• On three occasions each year, certain ePetitions will be debated by the House of Commons in Westminster Hall.

The development of a parliamentary ePetitions system was at one point estimated to come with a £1.3m price tag in the first year. However the Number 10 petitions site has annual running costs of just £109,000 including three full-time staff (against the seven that the Commons management board suggested should be allocated to the work).

And the current status of the former Number 10 petitions website (currently closed to new business) suggests that it could be switched to the Parliament website – a course of action that would minimise new development costs.

Such a move would be in line with the position of the procedure committee, which said that:

"We believe that it is very likely that the public would find the continuing operation of a No. 10 website and a House of Commons system confusing. We believe that, in that eventuality, both the government and the House would agree that the House of Commons for both historic and constitutional reasons should be the primary recipient of ePetitions."

The procedure committee's report unsurprisingly puts the focus on individual MPs acting as facilitator for petitions from people based in their constituencies.

This is perhaps understandable, though the argument seems mostly to stem from little more than "the historic petitions procedure in the House of Commons".

It also overlooks what might happen to petitions supported by, say, a coalition of organisations based in different places. Might they go 'MP shopping' to find the person most sympathetic to their cause?

But more important is what the petitions are intended to achieve.

The procedure committee sees four outcomes beyond the formality of being printed in Hansard.

• A response from the government within two months.
• Three times a year there would be a 90-minute debate in Westminster Hall on a handful of petitions.
• Up to two email updates from the sponsoring MP.
• The ePetition is sent to the relevant departmental select committee.

The coalition proposals (which originated in the Conservative manifesto) differ from these ideas in two important ways, other than being silent on the important issue of whether every petition should get a government response.

First, the procedure committee proposals would guarantee that there are always three opportunities to debate petitions.

In contrast, the proposed 100,000 signatory hurdle could actually be more restrictive.

Since the system was launched in early 2007, just eight petitions on the Number 10 site seem to have crossed that hurdle.

But the coalition's proposals go further in saying that the top petition will not just be discussed in Parliament but could be introduced as a Bill.

A little more clarity is needed here. For example, what happens if the top-rated petition calls for something that doesn't need legislation? Does the legislative opportunity pass to a less successful petition? And is the legislation introduced as a government Bill with time allocated to it, or a backbench Bill that has almost zero chance of ever reaching the statute book?

A further complication in moving the idea forward is the need to take account of a separate set of proposals from the Wright committee which in November 2009 said:

We recommend 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, on an experimental basis from January 2010 until the end of the Parliament; and that it make a report of its experience before the end of the Parliament so that this can be available to a new Parliament.

We recommend a trial in 2009-10 in advance of ePetitions of debates on petitions, subject to the presentation of petitions of sufficient significance.

We recommend urgent discussions among all those involved in the ePetitions scheme, with a view to bringing to the House in the early part of 2010 a costed scheme which enjoys the support of the Member bodies engaged: that is, the Finance and Services and Procedure Committees, and the House of Commons Commission.

These recommendations were backed by MPs in February 2010 .

So there will most likely need to be another parliamentary review to see how best to merge the government's proposals with those from the procedure committee and the Wright committee.

The other point to note about these recommendations is that they relate more to how a petition will interface with parliamentary procedures rather than how the petitions system itself would work.

What lessons are there in how to get this right? In the next post, I'll look at what we can learn from the European Commission's petition proposals.