Procedure and House Affairs committee  Not at all.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think we should.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You are very generous. Thank you.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The debates take place in our secondary chamber, which is called Westminster Hall. I'm sure your clerks can get videos of it off the parliamentary website to give you an indication and flavour of how it works. The debates are for up to three hours. They don't have to last for thr

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Ministers reply. In a debate on the main floor of the House you will get ministerial statements from the front benches. You have the government and the opposition at the start, and then with these three-hour debates around petitions, the front benches wind up at the end, normal

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'll let Huw answer that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Absolutely. If a petition went on and secured under 50,000 signatures in a week, I envisage the petitions committee getting involved at a very early stage.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Exactly.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's exactly why we want the petitions committee to be able to bring forward petitions for debate that fall well short of 100,000 signatures. Let's give an example. We are a much more populated country than you, obviously, and a tiny geographical region, but we still have parts

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Members of Parliament are very good at bringing forward issues relevant to their constituencies. We have adjournment debates for half an hour in the evening after the end of business. I brought things forward from my own constituency around, for example, mental health. I think

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Here are some: holiday companies charging extra during school holidays; effects of welfare reform on sick and disabled people; stopping female genital mutilation in the U.K.; cervical cancer screening tests and the case of Sophie Jones; making Eid and Diwali public holidays; rese

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That is an extraordinarily interesting question and that suggests I haven't got a very good answer to it. You're probably well ahead of us on this. The case of paper petitions...for example, I did a paper petition a few years ago and got 16,000 signatures. We put that in the bag

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That actually puts the electronic petition system out of step with the paper petition system, which I think is something we might have to have a look at.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's a very interesting question. What our IT people and those who are involved with the current petition system have told us is that you know within 48 hours whether the petition is going to fly or not, whether it's going to get anywhere near the 100,000. So I think any petiti