Petition If a petition gets 250,000 signatures, it should trigger a national referendum

Engagement with politics is continuing to decline. Direct democracy is part of the solution.

When an official petition receives around 250,000 signatures, it should result in an official, binding referendum.

More details

In Switzerland, when around 0.6% of the population signs a petition, it triggers a referendum (https://www.ch.ch/en/referendum/). This system works well in a country of more than eight million people, and there is no reason why it wouldn't work well in the UK.

A committee or group should be set up to administer these petitions so they do not needlessly consume government time. Note that only a small number of petitions a year would receive the needed signatures.

This petition is closed This petition ran for 6 months

13 signatures

Progress of the petition towards its next target: 13 of 10,000 signatures required to get a government response

Show on a map the geographical breakdown of signatures by constituency

10,000 signatures required to get a government response

Date closed 22 January 2017
Get petition data (json format)

About petition data

The data shows the number of people who have signed the petition by country as well as in the constituency of each Member of Parliament. This data is available for all petitions on the site. It is not a list of people who have signed the petition. The only name that is shared on the site is that of the petition creator.