Getty ImagesMPs will debate an online petition calling for a re-run of July’s general election, after it garnered over 2.8 million signatures.
A debate has been scheduled in Westminster Hall, a secondary debating chamber where such petitions are discussed, on 6 January.
It has become the third most popular e-petition since 2010, easily surpassing the 100,000 signatures required for a debate to take place.
It will not lead to another election – but was used by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch to taunt Sir Keir Starmer during Prime Minister’s Questions.
Badenoch said it showed “two million people asking him to go” after Labour’s first Budget since 2010, as the pair clashed over the government’s tax rises.
Sir Keir shrugged off her attack, saying July’s election – where Labour won 411 Commons seats and 9.7m votes – had been a “massive petition” in itself.
The petition, started by a West Midlands publican who voted Conservative at July’s general election, accuses Labour of reneging on its pre-election promises.
It was set up last week and has since been promoted by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and tech billionaire Elon Musk.
The Petitions Committee – which was set up in 2015 to review petitions on Parliament’s website – has confirmed it will be debated on Monday 6 January.
The debate will be opened by Lib Dem MP Jamie Stone, who chairs the committee, and the government will send a minister to respond.
There will not be a vote at the end of the debate, although the government will have to issue a written response because the petition received over 10,000 signatures.
The petition offered Badenoch a way to attack the government at Prime Minister’s Questions, as she faced off with Sir Keir for only the third time since becoming Tory leader earlier this month.
She added that rises to employers’ National Insurance (NI) at last month’s Budget had prompted calls from business that they would have to cut jobs.
The tax increase was not in Labour’s election manifesto, but ministers claim it is needed to fill a “black hole” in the public finances left by the previous government, and raise money for public services.
“There’s a petition out there, two million people asking him to go,” she told MPs.
“He’s the one who doesn’t know how things work. It is not government that creates growth, it is business,” she added.
The PM replied: “She talks about a petition, we had a massive petition on the 4th of July in this country.
“We spent years taking our party from a party of protest to a party of government, they are hurtling in the opposite direction.”
Badenoch also challenged the prime minister to repeat a pledge from Chancellor Rachel Reeves not to make further increases to taxes or borrowing after the Budget.
Sir Keir declined to restate the pledge, adding he was “not going to write the next five years of Budgets”.
And he accused Badenoch of making “unfunded commitments” by backing extra spending, whilst not saying whether she would reverse the NI hike if she were in government.
The Conservatives, he told MPs, had “nothing to offer except complaints”.
Those signing online petitions on Parliament’s website are asked to tick a box saying they are a British citizen or UK resident, and provide a postcode.
The most popular e-petition ever came in 2019, when one calling for Brexit to be cancelled received 6.1 million signatures.
Three years earlier, a call for a second Brexit referendum garnered 4.2 million names.
The current petition system replaced one run by the Cabinet Office between 2011 and 2015, which in turn replaced a Downing Street website set up under New Labour in 2006.
Almost 1.8 million people backed a petition on the Downing Street website calling on the Blair government to “scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy”.
