I attended a Hansard Society meeting this evening to discuss e-petitions. The Procedure Committee in the Commons recently published a report recommending that petitions should be permitted to be submitted electronically. It proposed that the constituency MP of the petitioner be asked to serve as a facilitator, that the petitions be posted on the parliamentary website for a specific period, that they then be presented to the House (either on the Floor of electronically), and printed in Hansard. Each would then be sent to the relevant select committee and the Government would also be expected to reply within two months. Perhaps the most innovative recommendation, though, was that on three occasions each year certain e-petitions be debated in Westminster Hall.
These remain proposals and there are some obvious problems with utilising such a method of seeking to influence Parliament. However, a system of e-petitioning exists in the Scottish Parliament and has just been introduced by the National Assembly for Wales. There is also the No. 10 website, though that lacks any method of intermediary assistance of the sort that can be provided by an MP.
One of those contributing to the discussion this evening referred to ‘petitioning Parliament’. What he actually meant was petitioning the House of Commons. Not unnaturally, people prefer to petition the Commons rather than the Lords. The Commons receives something in the region of 200 petitions each year. Last week I tabled a question asking how many public petitions the Lords has received in the past twenty years and when was the last occasion on which such a petition was presented. I have just received the answer. There have been only twenty-eight petitions presented in the last twenty years, and the last occasion on which one was presented was 13 December 2000.
As I say, the wish to petition the Commons rather than the Lords is understandable, but there are occasions when it may make sense to petition the Lords, including on a particular piece of legislation or to try to get an issue raised. I see no reason why we should not pursue the possibility of allowing petitions to be submitted electronically. I shall raise the issue and see where, if anywhere, I get with it.
I suppose the issue is that it’s easy to pinpoint who your MP is, and given the vast majority of the Cabinet is comprised of MPs, people tend to gravitate towards grabbing the attention of those with the power. Understandable, as you say, Lord Norton.
I should see about petitioning Peers about concerns I may have. The register of Lords’ interests is online somewhere, I think…am I right? Using that we could pinpoint Peers with an interest in what the petition is about.
In my case, my main interests are constitutional questions, on which I am largely cautious and conservative (note small ‘c’), and seeing as the Lords tend to be the defenders and the Commons the changers, I suppose I should maybe focus on discouraging reforming MPs!
Adrian: the Register of Lords’ Interests is available online, but the entries are not necessarily that helpful for indicating the political interests of peers. For those, your best source is the biographical details of peers available on the Parliament website at:
http://www.parliament.uk/directories/house_of_lords_information_office/alphabetical_list_of_members.cfm
Thanks very much! That’s a very useful link. I suppose I could throw a suggestion out that it may be useful to have a facility whereupon you could sort these hundreds of Peers into groupings of their interests? It’s a hassle to sift through the biographies to find peers with similar interests. I know you don’t have anything to do with the Parliamentary website, but perhaps one of the boffins in PICT could get onto it?
That said, I guess you could also look at the membership of various Lords committees.
Adrian: If you wanted to get hold of lists of peers grouped under particular interests, they are published in Dod’s Parliamentary Companion. If you have access to a copy, that will save you having to look at committee memberships and waiting for changes to the website. I will, though, feed in your suggestion.
The politically independent peers’ (Crossbenchers) website,
at http://213.52.137.147/interests.html gives you a list of crossbench peers’ interests. We love hearing from people and organisations in our own field. This list provides a contact person to ask questions in parliament on YOUR particular topic. You’ll see me listed in health, health service and third age. I ought to be in medicine as well, I’ll let them know…