Petitions in the UK
This briefing paper sets out trends in petitioning to the UK Parliament and devolved institutions. It provides a range of statistics on the number of petitions, the geography of participation in petitioning, and provides information on the largest petitions submitted to the UK Parliament and other bodies.
21 July 2025 marks ten years since the establishment of the UK Government and Parliament e-petitions system. The current system for petitioning the UK Government and parliament was established at the start of the 2015 Parliament.
The presentation of petitions to Parliament has a long history, though before the Civil Wars of the 1640s petitions generally dealt with personal grievances.
Since the later eighteenth century, radicals and reformers used petitions to make demands on parliamentary reform, the abolition of slavery, and religious toleration. These movements culminated in the mass-petitions of the Chartists in the 1830s and 1840s.
People have continued to use petitions to express their opinion: the Hansard Society survey of political engagement in 2018 estimated that 28% of the population had signed at least one e-petition in the previous year.
There are several institutional petitioning systems that currently operate in the UK. In the UK Parliament, Public Petitions may be presented to both the House of Lords and House of Commons in paper form, in line with historic traditions.
In 2006, the Labour Government introduced e-petitioning to the Number 10 Website, which was replaced in 2011 by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government by an e-petitions system shared between government and the House of Commons.
In 2015, a new e-petitions system, run collaboratively between the government and the Commons, was established. This sees the House of Commons Petitions Committee examining both paper and e-petitions, debates held in Westminster Hall, and responses being provided by the government.
In the Scottish Parliament, a paper petitions system was set up in 1999 and an e-petitions system introduced in 2004. An e-petitions and paper system were introduced to the Welsh Assembly in 2007 and 2008 respectively. Since 2002, paper petitions have been submitted to the Northern Ireland Assembly, and plans were submitted in 2016 to introduce an e-petitions system.