Clause 11
Local Democracy, Economic Developmentand Construction Bill [Lords]
5:45 pm
Rosie Winterton (Minister of State (Pensions Reform; Minister for Yorkshire and Humber), Department for Work and Pensions; Doncaster Central, Labour)
Apart from the slightly odd intervention about draconian, dictatorial imposition on local authorities and individuals, what has emerged from the debate is that the Committee believes that petitions have a role to play in allowing local people to express their views and to hold their local authorities to account. Indeed, the Conservative document, “Control Shift—Returning Power to Local Communities” talks about petitions signed by more than 5 per cent. of local residents within six months being able to trigger a referendum. Obviously, the Conservative party approach to petitions recognises their role and, in that case, talks about being able to have a referendum. Therefore, I hope that there is not a huge difference of opinion on petitions having an important role to play.
Lots of remarks have been made about central Government. The CLG website clearly signposts people to how we deal with petitions, confirming that the Department already responds to all petitions and aims to do so within 20 days. From 9 July details of petitions received by CLG will be published on the site alongside the response. The Downing street e-petition has been extremely successful—something like 27,000 petitions have been accepted for response. The Downing street petition system does not respond to petitions that are offensive to sections of society, but all petitions are acknowledged and, once petitions have closed, they are either passed to the Prime Minister’s office or sent to the Department. Where a petition is signed by at least 500 people, signatories receive an e-mail detailing the Government’s response to the issues raised. We are certainly setting an example at the national Government level.
I want to draw the Committee’s attention to a Local Government Association survey of 102 councils in England—something like a quarter of the sector— which found that only 28 per cent. of councils guarantee an automatic response to petitions. However, at the same time a YouGov poll found that, if a response were guaranteed, 84 per cent. of people would be more likely to sign a petition to their council and more than half of people would be more likely to organise a petition.
With regard to the point made by the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne, if a petition is simply ignored—there is, as I said, rather a lot of evidence that that happens—people will not know whether the points raised in the petition have been responded to. She was saying, “Well, they can make up their minds at the ballot box”, but if they do not know what response there has been to their petition, it is very difficult for individuals to know whether changes have been made—sometimes, frankly, changes might well have been made. However, if people do not know about it, because no response was given, it is more difficult to make that judgment. That is why we are setting out a procedure that enables people to respond to a petition. That is one of many procedures that we have brought forward to ensure that petitions become an effective way for local people to express their views.