Parliament received almost 9,000 petitions

Almost 9,000 public petitions were submitted to Parliament in the month after the EU referendum, reflecting the scale of the debate which divided the country.

The flood of petitions on both sides of the EU debate was around nine times the normal level, and included a call for a second Brexit referendum which has attracted more than 4.1 million signatures – around one-fifth of the total submitted over the course of the year.

In all, the e-petition system which completed its first full year in July attracted 23,232 petitions and more than 20 million signatures, resulting in 20 debates in the House of Commons, according to a new report.

Under the system set up following the 2015 general election, the Government must respond to any petition receiving more than 10,000 signatures, and a cross-party committee can select an issue raised for debate in the Commons. While fewer than one in a thousand petitions resulted in a debate, the Commons Petitions Committee said that some did have an impact in changing Government policy and 264 received responses from ministers.