Rejected petition Make it a criminal offence to tell lies in a referendum campaign

We, the undersigned, believe that the making of untrue and misleading statements severely influenced the recent EU referendum result. We call on the Government to extend the Representation of the People Act to make this a crime, as it already is in an election campaign.

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It is a crime under the Representation of the People Act to make false or misleading statements about a candidate in an election to influence the result of a poll. The Act doesn't extend this protection to referendum campaigns.

I believe the British people have the right to make informed decisions and that making statements such as "We send £350 million a week to the EU and will spend it on the NHS," which is now described as a "mistake", is toxic to our democracy and shouldn't be allowed.

This petition was rejected

Why was this petition rejected?

There’s already a petition about this issue. We cannot accept a new petition when we already have one about a very similar issue.

You are more likely to get action on this issue if you sign and share a single petition.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/123348

We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.

Date submitted 26 June 2016
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