Procedure and House Affairs committee  Absolutely. Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  They do on a huge scale, an enormous scale.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Some of them, yes, would be. The bigger problem, I think, has been if it's a petition that's been directed not at central government but at a particular local authority, a council, for example, about a very localized matter, those would be rejected. The other issue, of course, is

Procedure and House Affairs committee  One of the key reasons they may be rejected is that they don't make a specific request. So, if they ask a specific question of the government or a particular department, that would be one of the grounds. Another ground may be that there is a very similar petition and the governme

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, generally speaking. The backbench business committee could seek longer, but generally they've been 90 minutes or less.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think there have been just over 30. I'll need to check this, but there have been only about 30 since the system was set up. The committee was certainly concerned at the beginning about being overwhelmed, but with the 100,000 threshold, so few petitions get through that it has

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If Mr. Winter is from the Government Digital Service here in the U.K., I think he would be your best route. Certainly, the GDS would be the best people to speak to on this. As far as I'm aware, the political parties don't have any access to the data. Indeed, the data is not kept

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Again, I think you'd have to speak to the Government Digital Service. The petitions are open for quite a long period of time, so the data will have to be retained for that period, but what they do with it after, once the petition period has closed, I'm afraid I don't know.

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.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, the member will present it on the floor of the House. It will be handed over to the Speaker who literally puts it in the bag on the back of the chair. It's listed on the order paper, and the member can speak for a few moments on it, but that's it.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's about less than 1%.

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.