Just out of curiosity, has any petition – to the PM say – been met with a response like:

“Wow, we never thought of that. That is brilliant. We’ll do that right away”

I suspect not.

I am more hopefully about this idea, though it seems to be an exercise at cutting off a tory bill that is coming up later this year at the pass, as it talks about actually utilising these petitions rather than treating them as a gimmicky PR exercise like the PM petitions site. The sole purpose of the PM petitions site is to let people vent and then for ministers to say why everyone is wrong. in the nicest possible way of course.

So long as you are allowed to petition other people’s MP’s. My Labour MP has voted against the HFE bill as well as gay rights legislation so what would be the point of sending him a petition to drop the two signature abortion clause to one when I already know his answer. If I was able to send it to someone else’s MP who was pro-choice I’d have much better luck.

BTW, I’ve signed numerous petitions on the PM’s site, they always find an excuse to say no.

I think as long as the idea is that you petition parliament, through a decent organising body, then those concerns wouldn’t matter so much Humanite. Currently the PM petitions are nothing more than the chance for government (therefore Labour) policy to be reitterated, but petitioning parliament could be much better if the people accepting them are transparent adjudicators of public will.