Government’s e-petition website crashes on first day

New site struggles as users flock to sign petitions including one demanding return of capital punishment
TAKEN FROM: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/aug/04/government-e-petition-website-crashes

 Sir George Young says he hopes petitions with more than 100,000 signatures will get the chance to be debated in the Commons. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian Graeme Robertson/Guardian

Patrick Wintour, political editor

The government’s new e-petitions website crashed as people tried to sign a range of petitions including ones calling for the return of capital punishment, withdrawal from the EU and the legalisation of cannabis.

The Directgov website went live with a list of e-petitions on Thursday morning, but repeatedly crashed through sheer weight of numbers as it opened for business with the first tranche of e-petitions.

There were more than 1,000 unique visits a minute, the equivalent of 1.5m visits a day. Government sources said this was far more than the old No 10 e-petitions site had received under Labour.

By late afternoon, support for the retention of the ban on capital punishment totalled over 2,000 people, and there also seemed to be a small general shift to liberalism, with more than 400 supporting some form of decriminalisation of cannabis.

The leader of the Commons, Sir George Young, has given an assurance that he hopes petitions with more than 100,000 signatures will get the chance to be debated and voted on in the Commons.

Strongly supported e-petitions will be handed to the backbench business committee in the hope that time can be allocated for the issues to be voted upon and not just debated.

The Labour chair of the committee, Natascha Engel, welcomed the attempt to reconnect parliament with the public but added she was worried the government was “creating a demand and an expectation that cannot be met”.

She said the committee had been promised time to stage one debate a week, but was in practice being given less than one day a month. “It is a real concern that we do not have the time as a backbench committee as it is to stage the existing backbench demand for debates, and so hold government to account,” she said.

She added that she would be calling on the government to speed up its pledge to set up an elected house business committee by 2013, responsible for overseeing all parliamentary time in the Commons.

Young’s office said he was only able to guarantee Engel 35 backbench days a session, but said if the session became longer than normal, he would try to seek further days towards its close of the session.

The government appears to be giving less time than it promised because its legislative programme is taking longer than expected to complete.

There is also a suspicion that the government does not like the difficult debates sometimes arranged by the backbench committee, including recent examples on Afghanistan, circus animals and prisoner voting.

The committee holds public hearings in which MPs lobby it to allocate time for a debate on their chosen topic. Engel is concerned that, with a threshold as low as 100,000 for e-petitions, the committee will be flooded with demands for debates that it cannot meet. Some issues can be debated or aired in Westminster Hall, but there is no vote at the end of these debates.

It is likely that some tabloid papers will now put pressure on MPs to back popular opinion and vote for the restoration of capital punishment in serious cases such as the murder of a policeman.

Leading rightwingers believe there is latent support for the proposal among MPs. The issue has not been debated by parliament for 13 years, but polls show support for capital punishment has fallen to 16% for “normal” murders. David Cameron opposes capital punishment, saying it is not the mark of a civilised nation.

Other proposals on the site include “make prison mean prison – bread and water, that is it”. There are also calls to withdraw from the European convention on human rights, lift the smoking bans in prisons, and for an absolute right to self-defence in the home.

A large number of petitions relate to aspects of criminal justice, with many favouring a more punitive approach in which the rights of victims are put first.

One petition recommends the televising of court proceedings, and another that the price of alcohol be increased.

Strong support has also been shown in the petitions for a reversal of the decision to hand broadcast coverage of formula one motor racing primarily to Sky TV. Some of these were rejected as out of order.