On procedure and politics

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The Backbench Business Committee on e-petitions

Posted on | 7 September 2011 | No Comments

As readers may know, part of the plan when the UK Government launched its new e-petitions scheme this summer was that a petition which garnered over 100,000 signatures would be referred to the Backbench Business Committee for consideration for possible debate in Parliament. Two petitions have reached the required number of signatures and have been referred to the Committee (see this post for more information on this).

Today, the Backbench Business Committee has released on statement on e-petitions noting certain problems with the e-petitions scheme as currently set up and which need to be addressed. These problems are:

1. The Government has not allocated any additional time to the Backbench Business Committee for scheduling debates on e-petitions and the Committee’s existing limited supply of debate days is already oversubscribed.

2. More importantly, the Committee has no power to schedule debates unless some MPs come forward to tell the Committee that they wish to take part in them. However the Government has not provided any way to link petitions to MPs who wish to sponsor them on the e-petitions site, or any advice to petitioners on what they might need to do to achieve this.

The Committee concludes:

The Backbench Business Committee will:

  • publish advice on their website to help organisers of petitioners know how to take their case forward;
  • continue to press the Government to provide specific time for debates on e-petitions so that there is an effective way for the public to engage with Parliament;
  • hold individual and group meetings with campaign groups and organisers of e-petitions to discuss how best to get their issues on the agenda.

What this seems to imply is simply that there will not be any debate on any e-petition which reaches the 100,000 signature requirement unless the Government allocates more days to the Backbench Business Committee specifically for this purpose, and even then only if an MP or group of MPs sponsor a debate on an e-petition. Right now, there exists no way to link MPs with e-petitioners so that the MP can sponsor the e-petition and push for it to be debated.

Update: The Government indicated today that additional time might be allocated to the Backbench Business Committee for e-petition debates.

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