Oral Answers to Questions

Natascha Engel Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend may not know this, but I have this week written to the Chair of the Procedure Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), to set out the Government’s response to the Committee’s sixth report of the previous Session, which related to debates on Government e-petitions in Westminster Hall. I hope that we will shortly be able to bring forward a motion to extend the practice of opening up Westminster Hall for e-petitions until the end of this Parliament while we consider longer-term proposals for the petition system in this House.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

When the right hon. Gentleman is looking at the e-petition system and perhaps setting up a Committee to do so, will he ensure that we do not ignore paper petitions and give e-petitions and paper petitions the same status?

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Lady is right. I referred to the petition system advisedly—that is, not just the e-petition system. At the moment the e-petition system is working well and is a significant improvement on what happened in the past. The paper petition system in this House is somewhat anachronistic. What we need—I want to work with colleagues to make this happen—is a petition system that enables our constituents to petition their Parliament but also engages with Government to get a response from Government. The signal improvement, I hope, will be for this House to be able to use the petition system as a basis for demonstrating further improvements in the engagement of the House with the issues that matter to our constituents.