House of Commons Business

Natascha Engel Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Allen]

It is bad for the reputation of the House, but it is the truth. It is useful to call a spade a spade and to call a Downing street petition a Downing street or Government petition. Let us keep it like that and people will see the response they get from Government and will, through the processes of the House and its individual Members, be able to do something through the House of Commons itself. We cannot change the law for people, but we can bring issues to the attention of the Government. We need that capability to keep the Government honest and to hold them to account when many people see that as the way forward.

The fundamental question is about the separation of powers. We ought to have that, as it would be quite useful and would develop a more pluralistic view of our politics. People might not share that view and might think that we can somehow collaborate beyond merely using the platform and technology that are already there—I am perfectly happy to use that platform and technology to save the House money, as we all want that, and I am prepared to compromise on that alone—but an e-petition site for Parliament should be run by Parliament, not the agency we are meant to be keeping under control and holding to account. It is a contradiction in terms that the very people we should be holding to account will be running our system. I hope that the Procedure Committee will be very clear about that as it considers the issue. We all want to be pally and we all want to have little chats with the Leader of the House, but at the end of the day we either have our own e-petitioning system or we have not. If we have not, let us concede that and admit it clearly.

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

My only issue with my hon. Friend’s amendment is that I support the idea that a proposal should be developed by the Procedure Committee and cannot understand for the life of me why he does not submit what he has written in his amendment, much of which I agree with, to that inquiry, rather than tabling it for debate on the Floor of the House today. On that point, does he intend to press it to a vote?

[Mr Allen]

I can guarantee to my hon. Friend that I will make representations and, if I am allowed, I will give evidence to the Procedure Committee on the views held by many people in the House about the independence of the House’s institutions and agencies. I do not see Parliament as a sub-office of Government, a Government Department or an offshoot of Government. It is an independent institution that is legitimately and directly elected by the public, as are we all. The current Government and all Governments of the past cannot claim to be that.

The proposal in motion 3 smacks a little of a tidy-up job. The Government have said, “It is a little inconvenient to get all this stuff coming to No. 10 Downing street. We have to deal with it, so why don’t we push it over to the House of Commons and run the system for them? Then they can take the blame if we fail.” My hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) knows more than anybody in this House that if a petition reaches the barrier of 100,000 signatures there is an expectation, which has been deliberately inflated by Government, that it has somehow earned and deserves a debate. It is a difficult to pin down where that idea came from, but it was put out there and that is the assumption. That is why in every newsroom—in The Sun, the Daily Mail and elsewhere—the idea is to reach that barrier of 100,000 signatures on a petition to put pressure on my hon. Friend to grant a debate. There are other ways in which that pressure can be seen and relieved rather than by perverting and twisting the honourable institution that is the petitioning of this House.

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[Mr Allen]

I agree, and I shall come on to the point about how we direct people to a better way of doing what they want to do. It is risky to give people the idea that by submitting a petition to the House of Commons they are making their demands, only for them not to be met. The Leader of the House said that would be a great advantage, as it would make people think that the process represents progress and is more inclusive, and it would encourage people to use the House of Commons. On the contrary, if we allow the idea to be out there that if a petition reaches 100,000 signatures it somehow deserves a debate, which those horrible people in the House of Commons are preventing, it will lift people only to drop them back down again. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire has some experience of that, but it will be as nothing compared with the expectation that could be built up if we operate the Government’s petitions process rather than having our own based on open and honest rules that do not try to deceive people into thinking that if they write in they will get a debate.

[Natascha Engel]

Perhaps my intervention was not clear. Does my hon. Friend agree, given the content of his amendment, that how the petitioning system works should more appropriately be a matter for the Procedure Committee in considering such proposals? Will he press his amendment to a vote or will he withdraw it?

[Mr Allen]

My hon. Friend is a very powerful person in the House, but she does not yet have the ability to respond to a debate and to accept or not accept the proposals in my amendment. I shall listen carefully to the Deputy Leader of the House’s response. When he accepts most—not all—of the points in the amendment, as he no doubt will, I am sure we will be able to reach an accommodation. Somebody has to stand up and say that the House of Commons is a separate institution. The Government cannot just walk in here and set up a petition system on our behalf when we are perfectly capable of doing it ourselves. As the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) says, we have some excellent and expert people, who do not need to understand the software and the hardware to be in control of a petitioning system. We need to ensure that all those things are in place before we say that it sounds like a great idea to get together and run one petitioning system on behalf of two separate, distinct and independent bodies that are elements of our democracy.

Let me move on to the particulars of my amendment. First, on the subject of Parliament’s having its own site, let me repeat that I am happy for the technology to be shared if it means we can save a little money and can get on with what we are meant to do in Parliament. I would rather that than continuing this move towards Parliament as a theme park, where the sittings of the House get in the way of tourist trips and movies being filmed—the Chamber could have been hired out this afternoon to some Hollywood film company. If we can make a little bit of money by sharing the Government’s platform and technology and can have less of the theme park stuff, we should all be happy about that and could have a little more self-respect about being a legislature.

My second point, which was also touched on by the hon. Member for Broxbourne, concerns Members of this House and their role in the process. It should not be possible, willy-nilly, for a newsroom campaign to get a debate going in the House of Commons. “What are we going to do next week with our House of Commons, lads? Let’s get a few ideas, a few headlines, a cut-out in the newspaper and a debate next week—but on what?” As with the paper petition, the process should take place through a Member of Parliament: I have to stand up at the end of business and make a little speech to get a paper petition in the bag behind the Speaker’s Chair. I own that petition. That is the way to reinforce a representative democracy, rather than have stuff coming in, willy-nilly, from people who cannot sleep, have seen something on late-night TV at 3 am and have got up a petition to try to get a debate in the House of Commons.

I urge members of the public: “use your Member of Parliament. Convince your representative. Get them to put the subject that concerns you before the House.” To me, it is just as valid if one person contacts their Member of Parliament—I am thinking of the elderly lady who I met at the weekend who is trying to find an extra 40 quid so that she is not turfed out of her house because of the bedroom tax—as if somebody down in Wapping decides that we should have a debate on the increase in fuel duty, for example.

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

I will speak today only on e-petitions and their future. I have put my name to the motion tabled by the Leader of the House and supported by the Chair of the Procedure Committee. I am very much looking forward to explaining to the Procedure Committee our experiences and some of the background to how the e-petitions system came about.

The way the system works now might not be perfect, but it is part of an evolution, and it is certainly a vast improvement on the system in place before, which was entirely passive. I fully understood the Government’s desire to have a petitions system in which something actually happens, in which something triggers a response so that people feel that their views are listened to.

I think that problems have arisen from the current e-petitions system because it was imposed on this place without any consultation or debate, and certainly without a vote. The intentions were good and it was in order to introduce something quickly, but I think that, as a result, certain things have not worked as well as they ought to have done.

I fully appreciate—although I did not realise that the numbers were so high—that 10 million people have signed an e-petition and that there are 10,000 e-petitions in total. I do not think that that equates to 10 million people who are happy with the process; it just means that 10 million have signed a petition. I will outline why I think the system as it stands is not working as well as it should be. I will write to the Procedure Committee about that and give oral evidence if it is taking it.

I do not think that we can have a hybrid system. We have had long discussions about that. It is perfectly all right to work collaboratively to create a better system, but the problem comes first and foremost from the fact that a person is petitioning the Government but the petition ends up in Parliament if the 100,000 threshold is reached. It might be that people are not clear about the distinction between Government and Parliament. As we heard in the previous conversations about privilege, it is absolutely up to us to make people understand what the difference is. Perhaps we could even use e-petitions, changing the idea of them being simply a way of influencing Government policy. We could be very explicit that this is about educating people about how this place works and making it a piece of public engagement so that every single person who puts their name to an e-petition learns something more about how this place works in order to influence it better. If that is our motivation behind e-petitions, we could put together a system that really works well.

I think that the threshold of 100,000 was chosen arbitrarily—picked out of the blue. It has actually worked out relatively well in terms of the number of e-petitions that reach 100,000 signatures, but that in itself does not mean that we should have a threshold at all. When e-petitions first came to the Backbench Business Committee, we went up to the Scottish Parliament to see its petitions system, and we were very impressed. That system was not perfect when it was first set up, but it has since evolved into something that works very well. They have a separate Committee to look at all petitions, and I urge the Procedure Committee to look at that.

I understand perfectly well that there are arguments for having an e-petitions committee, but I am worried that the process of petitioning Parliament by paper is withering on the vine because the e-petition system is seen as being sexier. It would be good if the Committee at least looked at that and at the pros and cons of having e-petitions and paper petitions together under one committee.

The Scottish system does not have a threshold and every petition is looked at, but only after it has gone through a gateway, so there is a person to whom someone can speak if they want an e-petition. We have had discussions about this. If, let us say, the House of Commons Information Office provided that gateway, someone could phone or e-mail Parliament, explain their aim and ask how best to achieve it. There may be a Select Committee inquiry at that very moment on that very issue and that person could be directed to it; it may be a matter that they should take up with their MP and they could be signposted to their MP and told when they hold surgeries; or it may be a local government matter.

Many e-petitions that are still live on the e-petitions website could be better dealt with elsewhere and should certainly not be sitting around waiting to reach 100,000 signatures before anyone looks at them. I welcome the fact that the Government will now respond after 10,000 signatures, but we should be much more proactive about what we do.

If something is appropriate for an e-petition, the wording could be worked on better. That is when someone’s expectations can be managed so that people do not feel that as soon as an e-petition reaches 100,000 signatures it triggers not just a debate and a vote, but an instant change in the law. The website makes it very clear that that is not what it triggers, but that is the public perception and that is what damages their perception of e-petitions. Their expectations are not managed properly, and I am delighted that the Procedure Committee is taking this on.

As we have many e-mail addresses of people who have signed e-petitions in the past, perhaps we could consider having e-consultation with them to find out what they would like to see. I do not know whether that would be possible, but it would be an interesting exercise. There is a lot of research out there, but perhaps we could commission some more to find out how satisfied people have been when they have signed e-petitions in the past.

I welcome the fact that the motion is giving us the opportunity to take e-petitions away from the Backbench Business Committee. We have been urging that for a long time. Our Committee is very narrow in its focus. We are a forum for Back Benchers, not for members of the public. Back Benchers bring to us issues that are raised in their constituencies and that concern them. We always hope that they chime with the interests of people outside, but we are a Committee for and of Back Benchers; we are not an e-petition committee.

I welcome the fact that the whole House will have the chance not just to submit ideas and suggestions for developing an e-petition system that works properly but that, when the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) has produced his report, there will be an opportunity to debate the matter and to come to a decision so that there is then a petition system that starts, is processed and finishes only in Parliament. The Government may set up their own system if they want to, but there must be a petition system for and by Parliament.