By Will Sturgeon, 14 February 2006 16:40
NEWS
Grant Shapps, Conservative MP for Welwyn Hatfield, has today tabled an Early Day Motion urging parliament to accept petitions in electronic format.
Currently campaigners must present a written and signed petition in paper form but, according to Shapps, it is time government caught up with the widespread adoption of the internet in homes across the country.
Shapps told silicon.com as long as there is the same level of personal identification to verify the signatory name, address and email address, for example then they should absolutely be accepted.
But this isn't so online petitions, which spread virally, can blow MPs away with millions of signatures, Shapps said. It will still be important to keep issues local for greater success.
He said: "What I don't think is much of a runner is to create a petition around an issue which is cross-constituency. Although the internet is of course global, to have maximum impact with a petition I believe you still need to keep it massively localised."
As such, Shapps said those setting up petitions need to look at ways of using the internet to get the whole community behind a local issue - rather than assuming the massive wins to be had through viral marketing and a million-man petition will be more beneficial.
He told silicon.com he has also today written to the speaker and the serjeant at arms urging them to consider reform.
However, Shapps has his concerns about the likelihood of success.
While he is very tech-savvy, he said, the relevance of the issue will be lost on a number of MPs: "I don't think there will be any opposition. It will just be an issue of how many MPs are willing to sign up."
Comments
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1. Stuart Vine
"As such, Shapps said those setting up petitions need to look at ways of using the internet to get the whole community behind a local issue "
That'll be a community of concerned middle-class perople with net accounts then. The problem with most surveys, and I've designed and run a few, is that they tend to be self-selecting and not a really useful measure of wider community concern.
2. Karen Challinor
Limiting a petition to a constituency is only of use for those issues which affect just that constituency and no other
It is time we did away with constituencies altogether, for example in my constituency a large percentage of the electorate find they have no voice in parliament because they did not vote for the party that won, yet two streets away a different party won but these disenfranchised people are not allowed to go and add their voice because it crosses a constituency boundary
So a petition limited to a constituency would not help these people, unless as previously stated the issue at hand only affected the constituency to which it is limited, in which case why should government be bothered with it.
I seem to remember the labour party promising electoral reform, why can't they bulldoze that through like they are with the ID card bill ?
Answer - because having people grouped into constituencies which disenfranchise voters is how they won the last election with the support of only 20% of the population
Which means that 80% of the population wanted someone else but for some reason felt they could not achieve this aim
Bring on electoral reform, then lets talk about electronic petitions