John
12-29-2010, 11:24 AM
The Government is pressing ahead with plans to allow petitions attracting significant voter support to be debated in Parliament - with those attracting the most signatures even translated into Bills.
Details of the system - which was among promises set out in the Tory/Lib Dem coalition agreement in May - are yet to be set out or agreed with Commons business chiefs including Speaker John Bercow.
The guarantee of a formal debate for any petition securing 100,000 or more signatures and the chance of seeing a proposal put into law was among ideas suggested by David Cameron while in opposition to improve voter engagement in the wake of the expenses scandal.
It was strongly criticised however by Paul Flynn, a Labour member of the Commons public administration committee.
"This seems to be an attractive idea to those who haven't seen how useless this has been in other parts of the world when it's tried. If you ask people the question 'do you want to pay less tax?', they vote yes," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"If we get the e-petitions in, there will be some asking for Jeremy Clarkson to be prime minister, for Jedi and Darth Vader to be the religions of the country."
Source - Yahoo.
Details of the system - which was among promises set out in the Tory/Lib Dem coalition agreement in May - are yet to be set out or agreed with Commons business chiefs including Speaker John Bercow.
The guarantee of a formal debate for any petition securing 100,000 or more signatures and the chance of seeing a proposal put into law was among ideas suggested by David Cameron while in opposition to improve voter engagement in the wake of the expenses scandal.
It was strongly criticised however by Paul Flynn, a Labour member of the Commons public administration committee.
"This seems to be an attractive idea to those who haven't seen how useless this has been in other parts of the world when it's tried. If you ask people the question 'do you want to pay less tax?', they vote yes," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"If we get the e-petitions in, there will be some asking for Jeremy Clarkson to be prime minister, for Jedi and Darth Vader to be the religions of the country."
Source - Yahoo.