I have received the following email from Parliament:
You recently signed the petitions:
Give Government powers to veto or amend local road traffic schemes eg. ULEZ/LTNs
Review the brightness of car headlights for safety
Ban local authorities imposing 20mph speed limits on major roads
Raise Motorway Speed Limits to 100mph and Dual Carriageways to 80mph
Because of the General Election, the closing date for the petitions you signed has changed. All petitions now have to close at 00:01am on 30 May. This is because Parliament will be dissolved, which means all parliamentary business – including petitions – must stop. This means the petitions site will be closed and people will not be able to start or sign petitions.
We’re sorry we weren’t able to give you more notice that this would happen.
The petitions will be available for people to read on the site even though it will be closed for signatures. These petitions won’t be reopened after the election.
The Government can’t respond to petitions during the election period. This means if any of the petitions has over 10,000 signatures, they can’t receive a response from the current Government after 29 May. After the election, the new Government will have to decide whether to respond to petitions from before the election.
The current Petitions Committee, the group of MPs who decide whether petitions are debated, won’t exist after 30 May. This means that if any of the petitions has over 100,000 signatures, they can’t be scheduled for debate during this Parliament. After the election, a new Petitions Committee will be responsible for deciding which petitions are debated.
The petitions site will reopen when a new Petitions Committee is appointed, but at the moment we don’t know exactly when.
______________________
It is surely most disappointing if these petitions are to be completely lost.
Roger Lawson
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drivers_London
I agree Roger, my petition “Give Government powers to veto or amend local road traffic schemes eg. ULEZ/LTN” has been running less than a month and should have been able to gather more signatures until the end of October, I had plans over the coming weeks and months to bring it to the attention of a wider community, but now it will close on the 30th May alongside more than one thousand four hundred other live petitions.
Although it is possible to start it afresh once Parliament recommences business, it will be a brand new petition and cannot carry over the signatures it has already received, also there will be inevitable delays from the backlog of petitions that people would ordinarily have started during this period and those who try to restart petitions that were cruelly closed ahead of time.
And if we have a Labour Government, a party even more supportive of such schemes than the Conservatives would there be any point anyway?
I appreciate that all Parliamentary business stops between the dissolution of Parliament and the election of a new Government, I understand that responses and debates cannot take place during this time, but I fail to understand why Petitions to Parliament have to close. Why cannot they continue to receive signatures until their original expiry date, and if they surpass the required threshold, they can then be considered by the incoming Petitions Committee.
After all the petition is to Parliament, not a particular set of individuals.
I appreciate this usually only happens once every four or five years, but I don’t think it is right.
I intend to raise this point with my MP and hope to God he is still in place come the 5th July to raise the issue in Parliament.
The Election effect. Well, the system always seems to work against us individuals!