A year on, the new Petitions Committee has much to celebrate

Posted on July 20, 2016 by The Constitution Unit

The UK parliament’s collaborative e-petitions site celebrates its first birthday today. Over the last year over 18,000 petitions have been submitted, a level not seen since the 19^th century. In this post Cristina Leston-Bandeira discusses how this has been achieved, pointing to the success of the new Petitions Committee and in particular the way that it has engaged with other parliamentary activities. The next challenge may be to consider how to maximise the number of petitions that can realistically lead to some sort of outcome.

The UK parliament’s new collaborative e-petitions site went live one year ago. Nine petitions were submitted and 60,580 signatures were added on that single first day, 20 July 2015. Twelve months on, a total of 18,767* petitions have been submitted and millions of people have signed at least one petition. This is a stark contrast with the story of decline the UK parliament’s petitions system had known since the 19 century. From a highly used tool in past centuries, namely from the 17^th century to the beginning of 19^th, a time when thousands of petitions were presented annually with the back-up of millions of signatures, the number of petitions submitted fell to about 35 yearly in 1970s, rising slightly in the 1980s and 1990s, but never to their previous glory. Move forward to the 21^st century, and, in one year, we are back to early 19^th century levels of support for petitions – not a mean feat. But are petitions achieving anything?

The key to answer this question lies in the new Petitions Committee, in place since June last year. Equipped with a small support team but oozing with enthusiasm and ideas, the committee has achieved much over the past year. The system established that petitions with a threshold of 100,000 signatures should be considered for a debate and those with 10,000 signatures should receive a response from government. The Petitions Committee has hosted 20 debates in Westminster Hall on petitions with over 100,000 signatures, and the government has responded to 257 petitions (with only 17 still waiting for a government response at the time of writing). In short, a very small proportion of the petitions submitted have led to a specific action. But this is a very simplistic summary of the work developed by the committee to support the dissemination and effectiveness of petitions, where three key elements have made a clear difference: cross-fertilisation with other ongoing parliamentary work, openness in working methods and a strong focus on public engagement.

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The Petitions Committee’s first six months – paving the way for a new style of public engagement

Posted on December 10, 2015 by The Constitution Unit

The 2015 parliament has seen the establishment of a new Petitions Committee and e-petitions system. Cristina Leston-Bandeira discusses the committee’s initial activity, arguing that it has achieved much in the space of six months and has the potential to pave the way towards a new kind of public engagement with parliament.

One of the novelties of the 2015 parliament has been the establishment of a Petitions Committee, which has the potential to pave the way for a new style of public engagement for parliament.

Following the approval of a motion to create a new Petitions Committee last February, and still with no elected chair, the new Petitions Committee’s team set out to establish the foundations of what would become the UK government and parliament collaborative e-petitions system, integrating also the traditional paper public petitions presented through MPs. On 18 June the committee’s chair, Helen Jones, was elected and a month later, on 20 July, the new collaborative e-petitions site went live. At the same time the old Downing Street e-petitions site closed down. Nine e-petitions were submitted on that first day, collecting between them 60,580 signatures on that single day. Less than two months later the committee led its first debate on a petition that had achieved over 100,000 signatures, on contracts and conditions in the NHS.

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Do citizens’ assemblies work in practice? Eight lessons from a pilot

Posted on November 23, 2015 by The Constitution Unit

There has been growing interest in the idea of staging a ‘people’s’ constitutional convention in the UK over recent years, but little evidence for how one could work in practice. With this in mind a group of academics recently convened two pilot citizens’ assemblies in Sheffield and Southampton. The Unit’s own Alan Renwick, who was involved in running the Sheffield assembly, draws out eight lessons from two highly successful weekends.

Interest has been strong for over a year in the creation of a ‘people’s’ constitutional convention to examine some of the major questions of governance and democracy that face the UK today. I have pushed the case myself, as have many other academics, politicians, and activists.

This debate has drawn so far mainly on examples from other countries. Now, however, we have some home-grown evidence to learn from. I am part of a group – including also academics from the Universities of Sheffield, Southampton, and Westminster and a team from the Electoral Reform Society, and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council – who recently convened two pilot citizens’ assemblies to test out how the model of a citizens’ assembly works in the UK.

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Beyond the European Elections: what can be done to increase engagement in Europe?

Posted on June 9, 2014 by The Constitution Unit

Chris Terry looks at the European election results and considers how UK voter engagement in Europe could be improved.

Last month’s European elections caused great consternation across Europe as populist Eurosceptic outsiders seemingly swept to victory across Europe. In reality the rise of these parties is not as extreme as has been made out and is principally concentrated in a few large states such as Britain and France. In some countries, such as the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Belgium, Eurosceptic parties actually fell back. In others they fell short of expectations, as was the case in Italy.

Turnout was slightly up on previous European elections, albeit by just 0.1% of the vote – hardly the ‘endorsement of the European project’ as the federalist Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe leader, Guy Verhofstadt, suggested during polling.

It has been argued that the rise of populist Eurosceptics and turnout effects are predominantly a response to the lack of importance voters attach to the European Parliament. Eligible voters use European elections as an apparently ‘risk free’ way to express their discontent. It is fair to say the Parliament can feel very distant from voters. In Britain polls regularly report that less than 10% of voters can name even one of their MEPs. MEPs themselves come in two broad types. The majority are federalists who express views more pro-European than voters. A small but growing minority are dedicated Eurosceptics. One therefore wonders the extent to which either of these types actually represents the median voter in Europe.

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“PARLIAMENT IN CRISIS!” – HERE WE GO AGAIN…

Posted on June 3, 2013 by GRxx

3rd June 2013

The progress of the latest parliamentary ‘scandal’ is following a depressingly familiar script. After media revelations come the cries of “something must be done!” Then enter ministers with their brilliant ‘back-of-the-envelope’ solutions – remember Gordon Brown’s hilarious video on how to solve the expenses crisis? – and their promises of swift, firm government legislation. All accompanied by … virtual silence from those actually responsible for Parliament and its two Houses.

So the stage is set for a government bill which will do as much to solve the perceived problems as the 2009 bill setting up IPSA (and its subsequent amending legislation) did for parliamentary pay and allowances regulation.

Putting to one side the horrendous complexity of regulating ‘lobbying’ (in all its manifestations, including what may properly be regarded as ‘representative democracy’) and related issues of parliamentary conduct, ethics and standards, this latest ‘scandal’ demonstrates some genuine, wider challenges for Westminster to confront. I suggest that underlying these episodes is a more fundamental malaise that Westminster fails even to recognise.

Ten years ago I wrote an article on applying ‘political marketing’ theory to the unique institutions of parliaments [“Political but not partisan: Marketing parliaments and their members”, (2003) 9 Journal of Legislative Studies 1-13]. Using such terminology, I suggest that Westminster has a world-class and priceless ‘brand’, but, in practice, it is a ‘product’ which has not lived up to this AAA rating, and has thereby inevitably devalued the brand.

Over recent years Westminster has made great strides – albeit from an abysmally low base – in raising awareness among the public, but has this resulted in a meaningful increase in public support and trust? The answer must be a resounding ‘No’. Why is that? The obvious conclusion must be that letting the public learn more about Parliament and how it works has simply revealed a failing institution. There is little point, and actually counterproductive, in active public marketing until you are satisfied you have a product of which you can be proud.

True parliamentary reform can only happen if Westminster has genuine institutional autonomy, underpinned by robust and coherent principles and operated by a partnership of members and staff dedicated primarily to the idea of Parliament as the servant of the public it represents, not the plaything of the Executive or special interests. Such a body can be robust enough to do its vital constitutional functions effectively and to deal properly with any external or internal ‘crises’ – especially those dealing with standards and conduct issues – in a proactive and rational way.

If Westminster already had such attributes, the corrosive culture that allowed the expenses scandal to grow and then explode would not have existed. Parliament and its members would have been open, transparent, responsible and fully accountable to its public. Instances of alleged misconduct could have been dealt with without media frenzies, moral panics, and knee-jerk government legislating.

So the public’s cry to its democratic representatives should not be ‘something must be done!” but “Parliament, heal thyself”.

The Constitution Unit Blog

Tag Archives: public engagement

A year on, the new Petitions Committee has much to celebrate

The Petitions Committee’s first six months – paving the way for a new style of public engagement

Do citizens’ assemblies work in practice? Eight lessons from a pilot

Beyond the European Elections: what can be done to increase engagement in Europe?

“PARLIAMENT IN CRISIS!” – HERE WE GO AGAIN…