Behind the Scenes of the Petitions Committee
30 July 2019
The Petitions Committee celebrates its fourth birthday, and gives BBC journalist Jon Kelly a behind-the-scenes view of petitioning Parliament
Earlier this month, the House of Commons Petitions Committee and the UK Parliament and Government petitions site celebrated their fourth birthday.
Thousands of petitions and millions of signatures have been added to the site since then. The Petitions Committee has scheduled more than 130 debates and published over 800 Government responses to petitions.
Petitions have made a difference to policies and laws on issues that otherwise might have been ignored by the Government. These include more than £40 million extra funding for brain tumour research, new Government guidance to prevent sexist workplace dress codes, and ensuring that the Government includes disabled people in its policies on online abuse.
BBC journalist Jon Kelly spent time with petitioners, as well as with the Petitions Committee and the staff of the Committee, to get a behind-the-scenes view of how petitioning Parliament works and how it can make a difference.
You can read Jon's article, 'We, the undersigned', on the BBC news site at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/SZS0zzeSOh/Petitions