There are limits to the use of petitions. MPs are aware that, it’s easy to get lots of signatures on petitions, so they might not make a huge impression on Parliament. Letters make a greater impression, especially personal ones.

Yet petitions do have their uses. Only the most dedicated are going to write to their MP, so a petition will let other voices be heard. The main point in having a petition is for its use in campaigning, rather than in influencing Parliament.

If you live in Scotland, then you can access the Scottish Parliament’s Petitions Committee, which has the remit to consider petitions. You need to send your petition to the Clerk to the Public Petitions Committee at the Parliament.

How to make a petition

Petitions are the easiest form of street campaigning. You could set up a street stall with a petition for people to sign, or go along with your petition to someone else’s event (with their permission). The main use of petitions is to attract people to your cause and generate publicity about it.

UK Parliamentary rules lay down a certain style of wording that you must use for a petition. These state that you must use a polite form of address, the name or description of the group proffering the petition and the actual words of the petition, closing with a polite salutation. Petitions must be ‘respectful, decorous and temperate in the language’.

You may be using your petition as part of an overall campaign – for example, you may have also lobbied your MP to support an Early Day Motion. If this is so, the rules state that you must neither make any reference to a parliamentary debate in the petition, ‘nor to any intended Motion, unless notice of such Motion stands upon the Notice Paper.’

An MP or MPs must present the petition to Parliament. You must decide how you want the petition to be presented to the MP. This depends on the purpose of the petition and how it fits into your overall campaign strategy.

One method is to collect signatures in several constituencies and present it to the relevant MPs. They do not have to agree with the subject of the petition. The plus side of this is that, it will be presented to Parliament several times, over a longer time span. You can then send press releases to the local media saying when the constituency MP will present the petition to Parliament. This way works well for a local campaign.

Alternatively, you could collect all the petitions centrally, and have them handed over to sympathetic MPs, by celebrities. You can turn this into a photo opportunity and use it to get press coverage for your campaign. This second method works better as part of a national campaign involving other people, perhaps other organisations or groups nationwide.

Information supplied by The Fawcett Society. www.gn.apc.org/fawcett

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Petitioning your MP