The Strength of Petitions

Continuing the discussion from Road Closures:

To satisfy my own curiosity, I was trying to quantify the significance of 9,000 signatures on a petition and came up with some comparisons from local election data.

From the 2018 local elections:

• The Forest Hill and Perry Vale wards have electorates of about 11,000 each.
• These wards elect 3 councillors each.
• The elected councillors each received between 2,600 and 2,000 votes.

From the Lewisham Mayoral election in the same year, Damian Egan was elected with 40,000 votes.

Local MP Ellie Reeves was elected for Lewisham West & Penge with 32,000 votes in 2019. Aisha Cuthbert came 2nd with about 10,000 votes. There are only about 75,000 registered voters in that constituency.

Petitions submitted to parliament with 10,000 votes or more are notable as they also get a written response.

While it won’t be the case that petition signatories match council wards or constituency boundaries, and there are 18 wards and 3 constituencies in Lewisham, given the low numbers of people registered to vote, I think a petition of 9,000 signatures on a reasonably localised issue does start to look significant. Particularly a Lewisham Mayoral candidate would enjoy a significant boost if they were able to win support on such an issue or similar, though we have to wait until 2022 for that vote so it may not seem important to campaigning right now and there maybe even more significant topics in the future.

Sources:

• https://councilmeetings.lewisham.gov.uk/mgElectionAreaResults.aspx?ID=33
• https://councilmeetings.lewisham.gov.uk/mgElectionAreaResults.aspx?ID=39
• https://councilmeetings.lewisham.gov.uk/mgElectionAreaResults.aspx?ID=25
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000788

Since you mentioned parliament, here’s a list of all the recent petitions that got the 100,000 signatories needed for a debate (not just a response at 10k) and were still ignored, many Covid related.

IMG_26521242×2271 889 KB

Edit - source: View all petitions - Petitions

For completeness, the site lists 17 debated, 32 waiting and 7 not debated:

See all petitions debated in parliament (17)

See all petitions waiting for a debate (32)

See all petitions not debated in parliament (7)

Some of the reasons for ‘ignoring’ petitions was that the topic was already covered by past debate or implemented e.g. the first and third of your list.

Well, Parliamentary debates themselves were severely by limited by Covid, especially at the beginning of the crisis (when several of those petitions were raised).

Also, I think some of the things asked for by those petitions actually because U.K. law/policy didn’t they?

Anyway, I don’t think @ForestHull’s OP was really about national issues so we shouldn’t go further down that rabbit hole.

Sure OK let’s move it back to local then.

I think the problem with change.org numbers is that it’s open to anyone. Here’s Ealing for example inviting all the other ‘OneWhatever’ groups to come and sign their petition. https://twitter.com/EalingOne/status/1309834709036396551

It’s a free for all so can’t be considered representative.

Perhaps you didn’t read the part where I considered that:

I did read that actually. I simply forgot to say ‘I agree with you that signatories don’t match council wards or boundaries’ prior to my concluding sentence above.

I’m not denying 9,000 is a lot of people. 93 signed the ‘Don’t close the local Santander branch’ to put it in perspective.

I think in this instance I fully support a proper local consultation, just not sure how to do this without people gaming the system. Do they go door to door with the residents on the street? What would you suggest?