Online petitions will soon be debated in Parliament

28th December 2010

This is possibly the most exciting news in UK politics for a very long time. With politicians never really living up to the expectations that they create during the election frenzy, maybe the only voices we can really trust in are our own. Online petitions will give popular conceptions the opportunity to be discussed and debated by the Houses of Parliament.

With parliamentary time, the successful petitions will give air to a wide range of populist opinions and while there will probably be the odd one or two wild ideas that make it past the level of support needed to be discussed, it will at least provide open dialogue and the presentation of facts from both sides of a debate.

For example, Labour MP Paul Flynn has rubbished the idea, on the grounds that it will only attract only the "obsessed" and "fanatical" giving rise to "crazy ideas" being put forward. However, if enough petitions were put forward for Jedi to become the religion of the country or Jeremy Clarkson to become Prime Minister, surely it wouldn't take too much parliamentary time to come back with a suitably sensible response. Once debated, the petitions wouldn't be granted parliamentary discussion for a long while resulting in crazy ideas to shot down fast (with relevant explanation) and not debated again for a long time. I doubt that it would take long for this type of petition to dwindle.

Another point made has been that if you ask people whether they want to pay less taxes they will inevitably say yes, so there will be an inundation of tax reducing petitions flooding Parliament. My point would be to say, would this really be a bad thing. Surely, a big part of parliament should be to regularly debate the merits of tax reductions and how public money is spent.

Perhaps the most convincing point, however, is that it will mean that populist ideas will debated from all angles, giving the public the opportunity to see ideas being discussed. If the reasoning behind political decision were more freely documented then surely the people would find it easier to understand the merits of decisions. So when a tax reducing petition makes it to parliamentary debate, the reasoning for the higher or lower taxes would be documented so that we can understand more easily why they are necessary.

Finally, the petitions might also present the public with more political culpability. Right now if things go wrong we blame the government, instead of looking to who voted them into power in the first place. Maybe the petitions will give the public more responsibility for the shaping of political debate and policy resulting in collective learning and responsibility over time.