Site struggles as users flock to sign petitions including one demanding return of capital punishment
The government's new e-petitions website crashed as the public tried to sign a range of petitions including ones calling for a return to capital punishment and withdrawal from the European Union.
The Direct Gov website went live with a list of e-petititons on Thursday morning, but repeatedly crashed through sheer weight of numbers as it opened for business with the publication of the first tranche of e-petitions.
Calls for the restoration of capital punishment were made, along with calls for the legalisation of cannabis.
The leader of the House, 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 be voted upon and not just debated.
The chair of the committee, Natascha Engel, said she welcomed the attempt to reconnect parliament with public but added she "was worried the government is creating a demand and an expectation that cannot be met".
She pointed out that 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.
The government appears to be giving less backtime time than it promised because its legislative programme is taking longer than expected to complete.
But 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 the committee 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.
Ministers agreed to the new procedure in a bid to reconnect parliament with the people. 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 amongst MPs. The issue has not been debated by parliament for 13 years, but polls show support capital punishment has fallen to 16% for "normal" murders.
David Cameron has voiced his opposition to 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.
Among a list of 154 rejected petitions, most relate to sport on TV, with the majority of those calling for Formula One to be kept on free-to-air terrestrial stations.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/aug/04/government-e-petition-website-crashes
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