At the Study of Parliament Group annual conference, held last weekend in Oxford, one of the subjects discussed was e-petitioning. The system that has been introduced is proving somewhat dysfunctional: it raises expectations that cannot be met as well as exacerbating the tendency to confuse Government with Parliament. People sign a petition on a government website…
Last Wednesday, as part of ‘Parliament Week’, the Hansard Society organised a panel on ‘Parliament and the public: what difference does the Lords make?’ The picture shows the participants (left to right) Lord Soley, Baroness Scott of Needham Market, Peter Riddell (in the chair), Mark D’Arcy of BBC Parliament, Baroness Young of Hornsey, and me. …
I was interested in Baroness Murphy’s observation that the blogosphere is “populated by the sad, the obsessed, the eccentric, the fanatic and the ignorant”. I suppose I may qualify under two or three – even four? – of the headings! I try to keep my fanatical observations to my own blog. However, I was not sure what…
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…
