Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I can.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee. Perhaps I could just explain the Hansard Society's role and interest in e-petitions in the Westminster context. The Hansard Society is a political research and education charity based in London, but

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I can certainly send a copy. It's available via our website for free download. That's possible.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Certainly. The first issue is really a constitutional and ownership issue that may not be relevant in your case. Here, the system was introduced by the government rather than by the House of Commons, or indeed Parliament—both chambers. It was the government that set up the IT sy

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, in the U.K., essentially what happened was that a member of staff in the Office of the Leader of the House of Commons was left at the beginning to determine what constitutes a duplicate. There was no process around it whatsoever so it was very much sort of “try it and see ho

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  First of all would be a petitions committee, I think, to consider a number of routes in which a petition could be considered. Secondly, you mentioned that you have an existing paper petition system. I would think about how you integrate it together with the e-petition system.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In the U.K., no. The paper petitions are dealt with as they've always been dealt with. They're presented on the floor of the chamber. They're listed on the order paper. The government can respond to them in the form of an observation, if they want. But they're not integrated with

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think you could, conceivably, but there are very few paper petitions presented through that route. I can check this with the clerks of the House, but to the best of my knowledge that doesn't tend to be a problem.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't think there's been any noticeable impact. What you will find is that there are a number of online petition systems in the U.K. that the public will use. The 38 Degrees website has an e-petition system as well. What we're tending to find is that members of Parliament ind

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's usually 90 minutes. Basically what happens is, at the 100,000-signature point, the leader of the House of Commons writes to the chair of the backbench business committee informing her that the petition has reached a threshold. The backbench business committee then has to dec

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Once you reach the 10,000 signature threshold, you will have a written statement on the website. After that, unless you reach 100,000, you get nothing.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The last time I looked at this in any great detail was in the summer. At that point they had 5,800 petitions that were open, so again, with the issue of context, of duplication, it is very difficult for the public, for members to find things. It needs a really good search functio

Procedure and House Affairs committee  For the public to submit a petition?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  For a written petition, there's no minimum number of signatures. The member can just bring forward whatever petition they've been presented with, if they wish.