The E-Petition UK research project received an IRGA grant from Grenoble Alpes University.
Le projet de recherche E-Petition UK a bénéficié d'une bourse IRGA de l'université Grenoble Alpes.

Introduction

1In both England and Scotland, petitioning Parliament has deep historical roots dating back to the 14th century. However, when the 1707 Acts of Union dissolved the Scottish Parliament and established a unified UK Parliament in Westminster passing legislation for both nations, Scots lost their capacity to submit petitions locally. The loss of Scottish legislative autonomy led to long-standing political dissatisfaction, culminating in the 1997 devolution referendum.

2The new parliament which finally reconvened in 1999 was meant to mark a break from the type of politics practised in Westminster, by focusing on concepts such as power sharing, accountability, transparency, and accessibility. The parliamentary petition system introduced at Holyrood in 1999, the first in the world to comprise e-petitioning functionalities, was an embodiment of those key principles.

3Under this system, any person or organisation can submit a petition without restriction pertaining to age or place of residence. Petitions are then checked for compliance with a set of rules regarding contents, remit, or language (Scottish Parliament, “Rules about Petitions”). If they are deemed admissible, petitions are then opened to signatures. There is no minimum signature requirement for a petition to be considered by the petition committee.

4The scope of petitioning in Scotland is shaped by the distribution of powers across different levels of governance. The Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government are responsible for devolved policy areas such as health or education, while ‘reserved’ areas including defence and macroeconomic policy remain the exclusive responsibility of the UK Parliament. In the Scottish system, petitions are addressed to Parliament and are designed to interrogate government policy and action in response to citizen concerns.

5The main institutional actor in this process is the Public Petitions Committee (PPC), which manages the consideration of petitions and engages with the Scottish Government on the issues they raise. The Public Petitions Committee (PPC) is currently made up of eight MSPs, though the number has varied over time. Those MSPs are chosen in proportion to the representation of the various political groups in the Scottish Parliament. They are assisted by a clerking team and decide what actions should be taken once a petition has been deemed eligible for a response. The PPC may consult various bodies within Parliament, government, or outside political institutions to gather information on the issue being raised, including via official invitations to testify and bring evidence. The PPC may also refer a petition to another committee or department, close the petition, or recommend that a debate be held on the topic. Where relevant, the Scottish Government or other bodies provide written responses, evidence, data, commitments, or clarifications. This is the main channel through which petitions contribute to governmental accountability. However, while many petitions respond to existing policies or decisions, others seek to introduce new issues or advocate reform, highlighting the role of the system not only as a channel of scrutiny but also as a mechanism for agenda-setting.

6As accountability and transparency are key principles, a significant effort has been made to monitor this novel system at regular intervals—with Parliament and the PPC commissioning assessments either internally or through partnerships with academics being granted access to data and participants. The main reports deriving from such monitoring were released by Carman in 2006, Carman and IPSOS in 2009, and the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) in 2015. This provided extremely valuable insight into the functioning of the system, its capacity to fulfil its role, and its perception by users. Academics have also contributed significantly to this area with Seaton, Cotton, and Wright offering general presentations of the system, while others focused on more specific notions. Adams for instance analysed how the system was used to support the key principles defined above, while Beddie and Melina dealt with the value of electronic petitioning for the Scottish Parliament. Bochel studied which petitions could contribute, and in what ways, to social policy (“Different Dimensions of Voice and Influence”) and representative democracy (“Contributing to Representative Democracy”), and also worked more specifically on the concept of fairness in a comparative perspective. Lindner and Thiec debated whether petitions were effective tools for increasing public political participation and Hough whether they enhanced the relationship between Parliament and citizen.

7These studies, particularly in the years following the launching of the petition system, were cautiously optimistic as to its potential. Carman noted that the Scottish system had become a model other parliaments tried to emulate, with the PPC hosting delegations from Germany, Australia, or South Africa. The International Teledemocracy Centre at Edinburgh Napier University, which had helped develop the Scottish platform, used it as a basis for developing comparable systems in Bristol and Kingston upon Thames after the Local Government Act of 2000 introduced a duty for local authorities to promote democracy and community participation. Seaton argued that the E-Petitioner tool used in Scotland allowed citizens to overcome barriers of time and distance to facilitate participation and Adams concluded:

The e-Petitions System has contributed to the aims of the CSG in enabling groups and individuals to influence the Parliament's agenda. […] While there will inevitably be some debate as to whether this amounts to 'sharing the power', there is no doubt that it does encourage a more participatory role for Scottish citizens and lend some credibility to the notion that it is their Parliament. (Adams et al. 274)

8Yet limits were also highlighted. In 2006, after interviews with petitioners, Carman stressed that the majority of them were unhappy with the outcomes of their petition and that they were not representative of the diversity of the Scottish population, a conclusion supported by Bochel and the 2015 SPICe report.

9However, since 2016, though the PPC has published documents on the work of the petition committee, they have been far less comprehensive and systematic in their assessment than previous reports. Meanwhile, research by academics, other than Breeze’s study of petitions on law and justice, has dried up as the novelty of the platform waned. Consequently, little is known about petitions in Scotland, and particularly e-petitions, in the last decade.

10Such a gap in knowledge is all the more regrettable as petitions have features which make them unique in the broader landscape of participatory and direct democratic mechanisms. Unlike referenda for instance, which involve collective decisions on specific constitutional or policy questions, petitions leave the initiative for the issue being raised and the moment of mobilisation to individual citizens rather than the state. Moreover, in contrast to citizens’ panels and other deliberative forums, which rely on selected samples of the population engaging in structured discussion, petition systems are open-access and continuous, enabling self-selected participation at any moment. As such, petitions are a distinctive form of political participation deserving closer attention.

11To date, however, there has been no diachronic study of their use and functioning including recent information, nor any comprehensive overview. Nor has the petition data made available by parliamentary services been the subject of thorough and systematic exploitation. Thus, this is the perspective adopted in this article, which will deal with the period ranging from the setting up of the system by the Dewar government to the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon in March 2023.

12Donald Dewar headed the inaugural post-1999 administration and was therefore a central figure in the design of devolution. His time in office was marked by democratic innovation and experimentation, and the petitioning system was an example of this exploratory perspective. Nicola Sturgeon’s tenure from 2014 coincided with the maturation of both devolved governance and the petition system itself. This period was marked by increasing constitutional debate, culminating in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, as well as tensions over the distribution of powers between devolved and reserved matters. In a number of key areas, the Scottish Government demonstrated increasing policy autonomy, abolishing tuition fees in 2000, for instance, and introducing free personal care for the elderly in 2002. The development of devolved powers coincided with a broader expectation, shared by both Parliament and a number of citizens, for greater input into political decision-making, a dynamic reflected in the petition system.

13To better analyse this system, this article will focus more specifically on the volume of submissions and signatures of petitions over that period, petitioners and organisations making use of the system, contents of petitions and topical categories, petition popularity, and finally response.

14The data analysed here was collected by the author at https://data.parliament.scot/​#/​datasets. For each petition, the dataset shows the ID, title, details, date when it was lodged by the PPC, whether it was submitted on behalf of an organisation and if so, its name, previous action taken, signatures collected, response, and subject category. This data is made available under an open parliamentary licence which allows it to be freely copied, analysed, and shared. As the licence does not cover personal information, the dataset has been anonymised so as not to reveal the names of petitioners. The dataset holds the data made public by parliamentary services for the 2033 petitions published by the PPC over the period under consideration.

15No data is made publicly available by parliamentary services regarding the proportion of e-petitions in that number. But, from a trickle at the turn of the century, e-petitions made up two thirds of the total volume a decade later (Cotton 38). When the petition platform was remodelled in 2013, guidelines for petitioners stated that petitions should be submitted using the online system or the template on the Parliament’s website, suggesting that online submission had become the norm.

16No data is released either on petitions deemed inadmissible, though the 2015 report published by the PPC on petitions submitted between 2012 and 2015 stated that over 70% of all proposals did not go on to be formally lodged (Scottish Parliament, “Review of the Petitions Process” 38). While rules and practices evolved over time, rejected petitions are generally those which fell outside devolved powers, lacked a clear request, duplicated existing petitions, concerned a personal or legal case, or contained inappropriate or promotional content. Conclusions drawn below thus derive from accepted petitions rather than all petitions submitted.

17Finally, it is worth noting, as Carman did (58), that the PPC’s database contains flaws, and the original collection was thus corrected thanks to another collection of individual petition pages, fixing issues with signature numbers and dates in particular and adding data on response. Though the most careful attention was paid to data reliability at the collection stage, errors may remain arising from original records.

18A separate dataset was collected under a similar licence for petitioning data pertaining to the Westminster parliamentary system for comparison purposes.

19Given the volume of data involved, various digital tools were used to help process and analyse it: Open Refine for filtering data according to various criteria, Excel for calculations, Tableau Desktop for data visualisation, and Voyant and AntConc to mine textual data. Automated and manual analyses were thus combined, as well as quantitative and qualitative work on the dataset.

Petitioning Trends and Temporal Patterns

20As the Scottish petition system was meant to embody a new way of doing politics, steps were taken to apply its defining principles in practice. It was crafted for instance with explicit attention to accessibility. The platform was designed to accommodate slower devices, offered an easy-to-use interface, and multilingual, Braille, and BSL resources. And, as mentioned earlier, there are no age or residency requirements for participation, nor are there signature thresholds for consideration. To promote meaningful participation, the Scottish Parliament established a dedicated team to assist petitioners, developed discussion forums for deliberation on petition pages, and conducted outreach in under-represented communities like remote areas of Scotland, schools or neighbourhoods with large groups of minorities. Transparency was achieved through the possibility to monitor the progress of each petition on its web page, while accountability was reinforced through regular evaluations.

21Yet, despite the attention paid to democratic principles meant to enhance participation, the number of petitions published by the committee over time has declined and the introduction of e-petitions has failed to counter this trend. Indeed, petition submission has decreased since the introduction of the service despite a small resurgence during Sturgeon’s last term as shown in the table and the graph below:

Government	Government Dates	Dataset Dates	Number of Petitions	Number of Days (Mandates)	Average Petition Number per day
Dewar	13 May 1999 - 11 October 2000	14 June 1999 - 20 October 2000	286	494	0.58
McLeish	26 October 2000 - 8 November 2001	3 November 2000 - 16 November 2001	136	378	0.36
McConnell A	22 November 2001 - 20 May 2003	26 November 2001 - 16 May 2003	220	544	0.40
McConnell B	21 May 2003 - 17 May 2007	28 May 2003 - 15 May 2007	416	1457	0.29
Salmond A	18 May 2007 - 19 May 2011	1 June 2007 - 11 May 2011	332	1462	0.23
Salmond B	20 May 2011 - 19 November 2014	26 May 2011 - 18 November 2014	151	1279	0.12
Sturgeon A	20 November 2014 - 18 May 2016	30 November 2014 - 22 mars 2016	65	545	0.12
Sturgeon B	19 May 2016 - 20 May 2021	1 June 2016 - 19 May 2021	265	1827	0.15
Sturgeon C	21 May 2021 - 28 March 2023	21 May 2021 - 27 March 2023	156	676	0.23
Overall			2027	8662	0.23

Table 1. Average Number of Petitions Published 1999-2023

22There is also a clear downward trend as regards the number of signatures collected over the period under consideration.

23Such an outcome is in fact consistent with international trends in countries like Germany, Australia, and France, or for local authorities in the UK. However, it contrasts strongly with the data for the UK’s parliamentary petition system, which has seen extremely stable levels of submissions and an increase in the number of signatures collected since it was launched in 2011.

24A possible explanation for the limited uptake of petitions in Scotland as compared to the UK as a whole may be found in the 2009 report by Carman and Ipsos:

Firstly and most fundamentally, the findings from the qualitative research show that there is widespread ignorance of the remit of the Scottish Parliament and a perception that the Scottish Parliament has little power. This underpinned and was reflected in the comments participants made about the petitions process and is perhaps the most significant challenge for the PPC moving forward. (6)

25A report by the Commission on Parliamentary Reform released in 2017 emphasized that progress had been made in “delivering the vision of an open, participative, power sharing, accountable Parliament” (7) and praised “how proactive it has been in ensuring that all parts of Scottish society have an opportunity to learn about the Scottish Parliament and its work” (62). However, concerns regarding knowledge of Parliament and the visibility of engagement initiatives more specifically can still be found in another report published by the PPC in 2023. A survey carried out in 2022 for the petition committee highlighted that even almost 25 years after the new Parliament was created, issues still remained regarding knowledge of Parliament, its role, power, and activities. A participant at a citizens’ panel organised by the committee thus stated: “I have always been a follower of politics, but I did not even know the difference between Parliament and government when I started the process—I did not understand the separation in the structure” (Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee 15). It also transpired that there was confusion about the respective functions of MPs and MSPs.

26As for the exceptionally sustained popularity of the Westminster platform compared to the declining trend of the Scottish one, particularly regarding the number of signatures collected by petitions, work by Migrow and Magesan provides interesting insight. Indeed, while all accepted petitions are considered by the PPC in Scotland, only petitions with over 10,000 signatures are eligible for a response in the Westminster system. Migrow and Magesan stressed the role of those signature thresholds for mobilisation:

The results suggest that the prospect of government response is a strong incentive to participate, and that government commitment to simply respond to citizen concerns (with no promise of policy change) is a significant driver of citizen engagement. […] We estimate that the government’s commitment to respond to citizens caused an increase of at least 84% and as much as 115% in petitions that crossed the threshold. […] It is clear from these that petitioners and their core supporters are aware of the threshold rule and they use the rule to motivate individuals to sign. (2)

27The contrast between the vague offer on the Scottish petition website to “look at” a petition if accepted and the simple but powerful commitment in Westminster to a guaranteed response with a clearly quantifiable and achievable threshold is striking. Additional research would however be welcome to investigate further the underlying reasons for this limited uptake of the petition system in Scotland, although gathering data on non-participants in community engagement initiatives is a challenge.

Who Petitions? Individuals, Groups, and Organisational Actors

28Understanding these temporal patterns also requires looking at who is actually using the petition system, and how participation is distributed between individuals and organised groups. Indeed, there is a risk that petition systems could be highjacked by interest groups or lobbies at the expense of spontaneous and more independent citizen participation. For instance, in the UK in 1842, 467 petitions were presented to the Westminster Parliament for the repeal of the Corn Laws which placed tariffs on cereals imported from abroad to favour domestic agriculture (Carpenter, n.p.). The introduction of online petitioning could increase such a risk. Indeed, beyond the possibility of bot fraud-signing for instance, organised groups might be able to mobilise more participants, and faster, via email lists or social media. Individual citizen voices could then be drowned out by louder campaigns with better organisation and resources. Moreover, in practice, the boundary between genuine bottom-up mobilisation and campaigns led by organisations might be difficult to draw.

29Yet, unlike the Westminster system, the Scottish one actually accounts for such a possibility by asking petitioners whether their petition is submitted on behalf of an organisation. The risk of astroturfing, or a fake grassroots campaign, is still present but the small scale of the Scottish operation makes verification easier.

30Of the 2033 petitions in our dataset, half list a name in the ‘On Behalf of Other’ section. Overall, repeat organisations account for only 7.5% of organisations listed in this section. The most active organisations are the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the New Party and the UK Men's Movement with seven petitions each, followed by Accountability Scotland, the Overload Network and the Scottish Youth Parliament with six, and Fathers Fighting Injustice and the International Men's Organisation, Action Against Autism, the Scottish Gamekeepers Association and the Scottish Peoples Mission with five. Such organisations represent a diversity of concerns, from paternal rights to youth representation, local, national, and international perspectives, and different positionings. Some of these organisations used petitions over a short period of time, as the New Party did in April and May 2005, whereas others submitted petitions over a longer period, as the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign did from 2004 to 2020.

31Though some of these organisations submitted petitions on the same issue, as Action against Autism did, or the Overload Network on the prescription of neuroleptics, only the Scottish Peoples Mission formulated exactly the same request repeatedly when it asked for the return of the Stone of Scone to the community of Scone, and for the immediate suspension of tolls on the A87 between the Isle of Skye and mainland Scotland. Most repeat petitions by organisations actually tackled a broad range of issues. For instance, the Scottish Youth Parliament petitioned for mosquito devices to be banned and for a living wage to be introduced. The SPSC petitioned for organisations such as the Jewish National Fund to have their charitable status removed, and for the Scottish Executive and individual MSPs to cancel all contracts with Eden Springs, a company which extracts mineral water from the Golan Heights region and supplies many drinking fountains on Scottish campuses.

32At the level of individual submissions, petitions with the same title are present in the dataset. The most repeated title was ‘Place a moratorium on all housing stock transfers until such time as its concerns in relation to such transfers are addressed’ with seven occurrences. Though all were submitted by different individuals claiming no attachment to an organisation, they all occurred within a short period of time in January and February 2000, pointing to deliberately concerted action. This was also the case for the other two most repeated titles: ‘Extend the current remit for the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute to include a thorough investigation into the social, economic and environmental significance of the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland)’, and ‘Investigate the plans for car park charging by the Fife Acute Hospitals NHS Trust’. However, overall, repeated titles only account for 1.3% of all petitions.

33Among the most frequent terms in the name of the organisations in the ‘On Behalf of Others’ section can be found ‘Group’ (79), ‘Community’ (58), ‘Council’ (56), ‘Association’ (41), ‘Campaign’ (27), ‘School’ (25), ‘Society’ (16), and ‘Trust’ (13), clearly pointing to voluntary organisations.

34Thus, though half of the petitions to the Scottish Parliament were submitted by organisations rather than individuals, citizen-based action remains very significant.

35At the level of individuals too, repeat petitioners are in a minority with 70% of petitions submitted by individuals who only did so once. Cotton found that for the period ranging from 1999 to 2010, repeat petitioners amounted to 11.4% (36). The figure for the period up to 2023 is 11.9%, demonstrating a stable proportion over time. Among the 194 individuals who submitted petitions more than once, 31.9% did so twice. Only 6.2% did so five times or more. Among them, one submitted fifty-one petitions between 1999 and 2003, with none achieving more than one signature. This petitioner was identified in the press and in reports by the Petitions Committee as Frank Harvey, a retired postman from Glasgow. At a 2000 meeting of the PPC, the convener stated:

To date, Mr Harvey is responsible for 20 per cent of all petitions submitted to the Scottish Parliament. In most cases, it appears that Mr Harvey is simply responding to press articles on issues that he thinks merit the Parliament's attention. Many of those are high-profile issues on which the Executive, a local authority, the Parliament or some other body has already taken action. No one doubts Mr Harvey's sincerity, but it is clearly not a good use of the resources of this committee or the other committees to consider petitions on the scale of those submitted by Mr Harvey as a normal part of committee work. (PPC)

36Carman explained that during the second session of Parliament, an addition to the admissibility rules was made at the behest of the PPC to limit the ability of petitioners to resubmit a petition on the same or ‘substantially similar’ issue. Petitioners were asked to wait one year after a petition had been closed to resubmit a petition formulating a similar request (8).

37Interestingly, in his report, Carman highlighted the growing determination of the PPC, expressed in a 2004 note to the Conveners’ Group, to act as a “filter” (21) to “reduce frivolous petitions or petitions where there is clear evidence that the issue has been recently considered by the Parliament, Scottish Executive or other public body such as local authorities” (33). Part of the decline in the number of petitions published over the period under consideration documented above could thus also be related to this increased filtering by the PPC. The decrease could, then, reflect a drop in the acceptance rate, rather than in submissions. Access to data on inadmissible petitions would however be needed to test this hypothesis.

Themes, Requests, and Policy Targets

38The profile of petitioners is also one of the factors shaping the kinds of issues which are raised in petitions. Regarding the contents of the petitions submitted to the Scottish Parliament over the period under consideration, the most frequent 2-gram in petition titles, i.e a sequence of two consecutive items, is ‘Scottish Executive’ (174), far ahead of ‘Scottish Parliament’ (68) and ‘Scottish Public’ (25). Though potentially surprising, as those petitions were addressed to Parliament, such a focus on the executive might result from the premise that the Scottish Parliament is “an independent institution here to represent the people of Scotland, pass laws and hold the Government and public bodies to account” (PPC 7) in keeping with the principle of accountability adopted by the Scottish Parliament.

40The dataset made available by parliamentary services contains a section entitled ‘Previous Actions Taken’. Indeed, official rules stipulate that petitioners should demonstrate they have tried other means to address their issue before petitioning Parliament. However, only 33.8% of petitions in the dataset recorded text in that section, pointing to a loose implementation of the rules by the PPC, although this section provided more systematic data after 2012. 79.2% of petitions with data for this section contain ‘MSP*’ and 45.9% ‘MP*’. 183 contain the 2-gram ‘Scottish Government’ and 172 the term ‘Minister’.

41In petition titles, ‘Ensure’ is the most frequent verb (317). This may indicate that the petitioner wants the issue to be definitely addressed or secured and that Parliament has a duty to act on this matter. ‘Take’ comes second (207), frequently collocating with ‘Steps’, with recurring variations such as ‘Take necessary steps’, reflecting the petition’s role in inciting action. ‘Investigate’ (108) and ‘Review’ (104) are also prominent, expressing a call for scrutiny on a specific matter.

42Significantly, the noun ‘Health’ (128) is among the most present in petition titles, pointing to the salience of the issue for petitioners. This fits with data from the ‘Category’ section of the dataset and was already the case in Carman’s 2006 report (25), though categories assigned to petitions by the clerks have slightly varied over time.

43Despite the insistence from the beginning that only petitions whose scope falls within the remit of the Scottish Parliament should be accepted, the categories chosen by the clerks to classify petitions and more easily transfer them if need be to the relevant departments or services do not exactly match its devolved powers. In some cases, a category corresponds to a reserved power of the Westminster Parliament because some aspect can be dealt with locally (e.g. Constitution, Transport), and in others, the category title is broader than the reserved power (e.g. Finance vs Financial Services), but in some cases, petitions were collected on issues outside the authority of Parliament, as for instance with Foreign Affairs. Conversely, some devolved matters like tourism or social policy are not listed in the categories.

44It is worth noting that no data was made available on categories after 2021. Whether the information was no longer recorded by the clerks or just no longer made available publicly is unknown. However, 89% of petitions in the dataset had a category assigned, which makes conclusions possible. As mentioned, Health is the most frequent category, followed by Justice, People and Communities, Housing and Planning, and Education.

45While perceptions of petitions as the voice of the people warrant some caution given the fact their users are not fully representative of the diversity of the population, there is nonetheless some correlation between the priorities of petitioners and those of respondents to a 2023 survey carried out by Savanta for The Scotsman on the most important issues facing Scotland. Though categories do not completely overlap, Health, Housing, Education, Transport, and the Environment are prominent in both. The one concern which is in top position in the survey but much lower in petition categories is the economy. This might be because many aspects of economic policy such as macroeconomic strategy, monetary policy, corporation tax, or regulation of financial services are dealt with at the Westminster level.

Patterns of Petition Endorsement

46The next step to better understand the dynamics of the Scottish platform is to look at how much public engagement petitions attract, using signature counts as an indicator of support. The conclusions presented below were drawn from data collected in November 2024. Unlike the Westminster system, which automatically closes petitions after six months or if a general election is called, petitions to the Scottish system can be left open as long as they are regarded as under consideration by the PPC, which may be for several months or even years. 6% of the petitions in the dataset were still under consideration at the time of collection. Deleting them from the dataset was an option so as to ensure that the figures used for analysis were final, but that could have eliminated some which were of interest in the analysis, such as petition PE1876, which gathered over 13,000 signatures. In the end, petitions under consideration were retained as their proportion is small and does not alter the general conclusions. 35 petitions were deleted from the original dataset at this stage as no signature figure was provided for them, either in the collection via the parliamentary API or on individual pages.

471998 petitions were thus analysed. The average number of signatures collected per petition from 1999 to 2023 was 1,310. This result was obviously affected by outliers as the number of signatures per petition ranged from 0 to 268,738 and the median is only 32 over the whole period. The median being the middle value in a sorted list, this means that half of the petitions received 32 signatures or fewer. Indeed, 33.4% of petitions collected 0 or 1 signature(s). The majority (52.9%) collected 50 or under. 18.2% collected 1,000 or over and 2.8% 10,000 or over. Thus, most petitions collected few signatures although a small number managed to mobilise significantly.

48As mentioned in Part 1, the overall number of signatures collected by petitions decreased over time. This may be partly a mechanical consequence of a decreasing number of petitions, either because of lower levels of submissions or due to more filtering by the PPC. But the mean remained stable over time because a small number of petitions continued to attract a large number of signatures, though only two of the twenty most signed petitions were submitted between 2019 and 2023.

49Finally, the increase of the median suggests that while fewer petitions were submitted, some still managed to attract high levels of signatures, possibly because they were more organised and better promoted.

50This points to a concentration of mobilisation with greater inequality in engagement. A small number of petitions attracted considerable attention, while most were ignored. Fewer petitions obtained very low scores, which supports the Public Petitions Committee’s decision to adopt more rigorous screening measures from 2004, particularly regarding duplicates which dilute the weight of support for a cause and are banned in the Westminster system for this reason. Further changes to admissibility procedures were also suggested in 2021:

The first is to make inadmissible a petition that is substantially the same as a petition that is already under consideration by the Parliament. The second is to allow a petitioner to have a maximum of two current petitions under consideration by the Parliament at any one time. The third is to make a petition inadmissible if it relates to a bill that is currently under consideration by the Parliament or to primary legislation that has been passed by the Parliament within a period of 12 months preceding the lodging of the petition. (Scottish Parliament, “Official Report: Meeting of Parliament”106)

ID	Date	Signatures	Title
PE01039	13 02 2007	268.738	Petition by Cancer Research UK, urging politicians to plan now for the future of cancer. Specifically in Scotland, calling on politicians to update the Cancer in Scotland strategy beyond its current end date of 2011 up to 2020 and beyond.
PE00804	20 12 2004	160.000	Petition calling for the Scottish Parliament to use its influence to return control over its Fishing Industry to Scotland.
PE00183	25 04 2000	120.000	Petition calling for the Scottish Parliament to stop the proposed repeal of the Section 2A (Clause 28) by the Scottish Executive.
PE01046	15 03 2007	78.790	Calling on the Scottish Parliament to support significant reductions in class sizes in Scottish publicly funded schools during the lifetime of the next Scottish Parliament.
PE00354	04 04 2001	45.000	Petition calling for the Scottish Parliament to take a view on the proposals to remove acute medical and surgical services at Stobhill General Hospital, and take whatever further action is appropriate.
PE00499	26 04 2002	39.000	Petition calling for the Scottish Parliament to urge the Health Minister not to upgrade the Victoria Hospital, Kircaldy at the expense of the Queen Margaret Hospital, Dunfermline, when he considers the board’s Right for Fife business case.
PE00431	06 12 2001	31.184	Petition calling for the Scottish Parliament to take the necessary steps to ensure that patients who may benefit from beta interferon and glatiramer receive it as soon as is logistically possible.
PE1758	11 09 2019	29.241	End greyhound racing In Scotland
PE00036	26 11 1999	26.800	Petition calling for the Scottish Parliament to conduct a debate on the subject of the proposed closure of the Neurosurgical Unit at Ninewells Hospital, Dundee.
PE00155	31 03 2000	26.000	Petition calling for the Scottish Parliament to retain Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988
PE00381	13 06 2001	24.066	Petition calling for the Scottish Parliament to examine the Scottish Ambulance Service’s proposals to close five of its eight Scottish Operations rooms and to satisfy itself that the implications of these proposals will not detrimentally effect the staff, the other emergency services and the medical profession whom rely on the co-operation of the ambulance service, and in particular the level of service provided to the general public.
PE00772	24 09 2004	24.000	Petition calling for the Scottish Parliament to ensure that any proposed clinical strategy emerging from NHS Boards, such as NHS Argyll and Clyde, must clearly demonstrate cross boundary working in the interests of patient care.
PE01199	23 09 2008	23.144	Petition calling for the Scottish Parliament to ensure that when changes are proposed to the structure and role of health visitors, transparent, effective and meaningful public consultation with service users and health professionals is carried out.
PE01084	09 10 2007	23.011	Petition calling for the Scottish Parliament to halt the merger of Scotland’s four neurological units and to give proper consideration to the impact of this for people in the Aberdeen and north of Scotland areas with brain injuries or trauma who would have to travel south for life saving treatment.
PE01198	23 09 2008	22.539	Petition calling for the Scottish Parliament to ensure that when changes are proposed to the structure and role of health visitors, transparent, effective and meaningful public consultation with service users and health professionals is carried out.
PE00203	17 05 2000	22.400	Petition calling for the Scottish Parliament to call for a new hospital to serve the people of South Glasgow and surrounding areas, with the services currently provided at Victoria Infirmary being retained meantime.
PE01200	23 09 2008	22.058	Petition calling for the Scottish Parliament to ensure that when changes are proposed to the structure and role of health visitors, transparent, effective and meaningful public consultation with service users and health professionals is carried out.
PE00677	08 10 2003	21.449	Petition calling for the Scottish Parliament to work in partnership with retailers, the police and local authorities to improve the safety of shopworkers by promoting and resourcing Safer Shopping Partnerships.
PE1852	23 12 2020	21.205	Increase planning protection for Scottish battlefields
PE00523	27 06 2002	18.000	Petition calling for the Scottish Parliament to initiate a national inquiry into early years education and childcare with a view to producing a report and recommendations on the way forward.

Table 2. Twenty Most Signed Petitions 1999-2023

52More details on the three most signed petitions in the dataset are provided in part 7.

Response

53Institutional responses and general impact provide another angle on how petitions are processed and acted upon once submitted. Out of the three most signed petitions in the dataset, only one achieved its goal. Both Carman and Cotton also found petitions whose request ended up being granted. However, Hough, among others, stressed how complex it was to demonstrate causality between petitions and legislative transformation, particularly on a large scale (10).

54Information can however be drawn from the response provided by the PPC to petitioners. Indeed, each petition page available online lists the response the PPC made to the request formulated, with a list of the actions undertaken and relevant documents. This was part of the Scottish Parliament’s initial drive for transparency and accountability. Currently, the petition website lists the following actions which the PPC may undertake:

Get written information or hear from the Scottish Government, other organisations, or people.
Write to the petitioner for more information or to invite them to talk to the committee about the petition.
“Refer” (send) the petition to another committee.
Recommend actions for the Scottish Government.
Ask for a debate about the petition in the Chamber.
Close the petition. (Scottish Parliament, “Rules about Petitions”)

55Indeed, ‘Write’ (3251) is the most common verb found in the ‘Response’ section of the petition pages, in phrases such as ‘Write to the Scottish government’ (1366), ‘Write to the Scottish executive’ (297), ‘Write to the minister’ (266) and ‘Write to the cabinet secretary’ (98). ‘Letters’ (2094) were mostly preferred to ‘Emails’ (259). After 2011, a briefing from SPICe was almost systematically commissioned. These briefings, which are not specific to the context of petitions, typically summarize background information, recent developments, key arguments, statistical data, and references, so as to inform decisions made by MSPs or committees. However, seeking information on the issue being raised is more broadly the PCC’s main area of action, as is visible in the prevalence of terms and phrases such as ‘Report’ (Verb + noun = 4361), ‘Evidence’ (1248), ‘Written submissions’ (996), ‘Review’ (455), ‘Written questions’ (383), ‘Information’ (773), ‘Inquiry’ (344), ‘Comments’ (351), ‘Research’ (225), or ‘Consultation’ (276).

56Gathering information is carried out thanks to contact with ‘Associations’ (567), 'Groups’ (412), ‘Societies’ (330), ‘Commissions’ (329) or ‘Royal bodies’ (240) such as various royal colleges. Contacts are also made with ‘Councils’ (1161) and more particularly ‘City councils’ (127) in ‘Glasgow’ (76), ‘Edinburgh’ (63), ‘Ayrshire’ (61), and ‘Argyll and Bute’ (53), as well as with ‘COSLA’, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (416).

57In keeping with the areas of concern mentioned earlier, the persons written to can be ‘MSPs’ (276) but also the ‘Minister for Health’ (154) and ‘Public health’ (53), ‘Transport’ (118), ‘Justice’ (103) or the ‘Environment’ (65), with high recurrence of the following terms: ‘Health’ (1592), ‘Transport’ (920), ‘Environment’ (790), ‘Justice’ (742), ‘Law’ (397), ‘Education’ (561), and ‘Rural’ (536).

58Debates can also be organised in the main chamber of Parliament, such as the one which was held to consider PE1319 on improving youth football in Scotland in 2017.

High-Impact Cases

59The following section examines a small number of high-impact cases to show how the dynamics outlined above operates in practice, and to provide additional insights into their functioning. The petition which collected the most signatures over the whole dataset (268,738) was an e-petition submitted online by Cancer Research UK in the run-up to the election of May 2007. It was part of their Cancer 2020 campaign which called on politicians in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland to plan for the cancer challenges ahead. The charity called on the government to update its national cancer strategy after developments fundamentally altered the “cancer landscape” in the UK, including the rise in cancer incidence caused by an ageing population but also the growing number of people living longer after a cancer diagnosis thanks to increasing public awareness of cancer symptoms and risk factors, enhanced screening, earlier diagnosis, and more effective treatments. (UK Parliament)

60The petition was lodged in February 2007. In September, an email was sent by the clerk of the committee, requesting an update on the position of the government regarding Scotland’s cancer strategy, to the DG Health Office, i.e. the office supporting the senior civil service leadership responsible for health policy within the Scottish Government. In November, an answer was provided, listing various ongoing governmental initiatives in that sector, including a consultation of the Scottish Cancer Coalition for their views on what they believed was needed to meet future challenges for cancer and a follow-up report, as well as the announcement of an outline framework for an updated strategy by the end of the year (Porterfield). Accordingly, in January 2008, the PPC closed consideration of the petition on the grounds that work was underway by the Scottish Government to address the issue being raised. In a letter answering a request for feedback on the petition process by the clerk to the Committee, Richard Davidson, the director of Policy and Public Affairs at Cancer Research UK, expressed his satisfaction with the outcome of the petition:

Since lodging our petition, we have received confirmation from Nicola Sturgeon, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing that cancer remains a top priority for the Scottish Government, and that the cancer strategy will be updated in order to plan for the future challenges of cancer in Scotland. As Elizabeth Porterfield states in her response, we were very pleased to invite Ms Sturgeon to speak at the Scotland Against Cancer Conference on 29 October 2007, at which she reaffirmed that the cancer strategy would be updated, and outlined the timescales for its development.
In addition, Cancer Research UK attended, as a member of the Scottish Cancer Coalition (SCC), a meeting with the Cabinet Secretary last month where we provided a working paper on the key issues identified by SCC for the update of the cancer strategy. (Cochrane 1)

61Interestingly, a similar petition had been submitted to the 10 Downing Street platform shortly before the Scottish one, as well as on a dedicated website at www.cancer2020.org. Signing was also possible in Cancer Research UK's shops and at its fundraising events.

62In written evidence to the Select Committee on Procedure at the Westminster Parliament in November 2007, the charity asked to be given access to petitioners’ details to help run their campaigns, a practice which has become monetized by private petitioning platforms but is incompatible with the General Data Protection Regulation parliaments are subject to. Via the petition system, the organisation was therefore not only interested in demonstrating support for its cause through signatures, but also in building a contact base of supporters who could be mobilised again in future actions. It also suggests an increasingly data-driven and professionalised approach to campaigning for the charity. Such a professionalised approach might explain why this petition was the only one of the fifteen other petitions on cancer in the dataset to reach such levels of mobilisation. Indeed, the second most signed, petition 349 (Carry out an urgent investigation into the reasons why cancer rates are higher in East Lothian than elsewhere in the Lothian Health Board Area) only gathered 2,330 signatures.

63This petition thus demonstrates a strategic use of the petition system as part of a coordinated, UK-wide campaign designed to make the most of the newly available digital tools. This use of e-petitioning belongs to the field of lobbying and policy advocacy rather than stand-alone civic action. As this petition was the only one in the whole dataset submitted on behalf of Cancer Research UK, it indicates that petitions are not a routine mode of engagement for such an organisation but rather a strategic instrument mobilised selectively to signal public support and reinforce existing lobbying efforts.

64Cancer Research UK however remained a source of expertise for the PPC on cancer-related issues such as the one raised in petition 904 (Consider introducing an early breast cancer screening programme in Scotland to start from age 30 upwards) in 2005 or petition 1783 in 2020 (Raise public awareness of harder to treat childhood cancers and to provide additional; funding to finding cures). In 2017, a letter answering a request for expertise from the PPC on petition 1629 (MRI scans for ocular melanoma sufferers in Scotland) concluded with the following words: “please don’t hesitate to contact us in the future if you believe we may be able to support your inquiries. We are very willing to contribute views, and generally have a strong and broad evidence and policy base to draw from” (Cancer Research UK). This fits with the charity’s mission to fund research, improve prevention, but also influence cancer policy. Regarding the Scottish petition system, this suggests it is accessible and open to external input, functions as mentioned earlier as an information-gathering hub, and operates within a wider network of actors on the issues being raised.

65The second most signed petition was in hybrid format as it collected signatures both on paper and online. It was launched in 2004 by the wives of Fraserburgh fishermen who were part of a group called the Cod Crusaders. The petition was submitted as the European Commission proposed a major round of fishing cuts, including the closure of heavily depleted cod grounds in the North Sea, the Irish Sea and off the west coast of Scotland. The wider background included the intensification of conservation measures by the EU in previous years, following scientific warnings about collapsing cod stocks, and the support by the EU and the UK for ship decommissioning schemes to reduce fishing capacity. Such measures hit particularly hard in areas dependent on the fishing industry like Fraserburgh and the surrounding Aberdeenshire communities. Moreover, as demonstrated by Williams, the petition was introduced as Scottish fishermen experienced a feeling of exclusion from the decision-making processes directly affecting their lives such as the allocation of fishing quotas or days at sea, while McAngus highlighted their sense of alienation from and profound distrust of European institutions.

66Overall, the petition gathered 250,000 signatures (Quinn) and the campaign managed to draw the support of high-profile individuals like Sean Connery or SNP leader Alex Salmond, who planned to introduce a private member's bill in Westminster to re-establish national control of fishing. The aim of the group was to gather 150,000 names before presenting the petition to the Scottish, Westminster, and European Parliaments. In 2005, the Public Petitions Committee heard from the petitioners and representatives of the fishing community. One of them stated:

The petition is a cry for help from the fishing communities. We are doing what we can to go through the democratic process. We live in a free and democratic society; let us have some democracy in relation to this issue. (Public Petitions Committee)

67The PPC agreed to write to the Minister for Environment and Rural Development and the House of Commons’ Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs Committee. Details of committee work on the issue was also forwarded to the European and External Relations Committee. The PPC then wrote to the Scottish Executive. The European and External Relations Committee considered a scoping paper on a possible structure for future engagement with the petition. The EERC’s legal advisor was also asked to draft a paper detailing the legal position and legal implications of the UK withdrawing from the Common Fisheries Policy. The petition was then closed in September 2006.

68This petition was thus passed from one committee to another without any progress regarding the request being formulated. Admittedly, whether such a request fell within the remit of the Scottish Parliament is debatable and was debated during discussions by the various committees. The public session of the PPC held in February 2005 to hear from the petitioners was indeed described as ‘heated’ (BBC, “Major Fishing Petition Handed In”).

69The petitioners wrote to President Bush and to Tony Blair, who refused to see them, but they were able to meet Gordon Brown and campaigned actively in the media. This petition did not achieve its goal but it was not the end of the road for the campaign. In 2006, Morag Ritchie, one of the Crusaders, was interviewed on the plight of Scottish fishermen on the occasion of the release of the film True North, which depicted a trawler skipper facing financial ruin and the loss of his boat. The Cod Crusaders’ campaign had actually been launched as early as 2002. In 2003, Ritchie and Carol MacDonald, another Cod Crusader, had appeared in a documentary called Gutted which won a Scottish BAFTA award. There is thus evidence that the petition was part of a long-standing battle. In 2009, MacDonald took part in a meeting with the Scottish Fisheries’ Secretary, Richard Lochhead, and as late as 2019, the team was still active, mobilizing in favour of Brexit in the hope that an exit from the European Union would help Scottish fishermen.

70This petition thus combined online and paper signatures so as to broaden public participation and demonstrated the potential for petitions to attract influential backers and media attention. It gave a voice to members of local communities facing serious socioeconomic threats and provided a democratic outlet for their cause, revealing how petitions are used to reassert presence and control by those communities who see themselves as marginalized from decision-making institutions that are regarded as remote and technocratic. It also shows that committee processes can be circular and frustrating and that jurisdictional considerations place limitations on the PCC’s capacity to act. This petition can therefore be seen as the formal institutional expression of a broader campaign, an attempt at converting local protest energy into formal political leverage.

71The third most popular petition, with 120,000 signatures, voiced a request to ‘Stop the proposed repeal of section 2A, clause 28 by the Scottish Executive.’ Section 28, also known as Clause 28, was a law introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government which banned local authorities across Britain from ‘promoting homosexuality.’ It was in force from 1988 to 2000 in Scotland and until 2003 in England and Wales, and many organisations supporting LGBTQ+ groups reduced their activities, avoided public visibility, or lost access to funding due to the “chilling effect” of the legislation (Iglikowski-Broad).

72In October 1999, the Communities Minister, Wendy Alexander, announced that Section 28 would be abolished in Scotland by a bill expected to pass before Summer 2000. The petition was submitted in response to this announcement on behalf of a group called ‘Keep the Clause’, a privately-funded political effort aimed at stopping the repeal of Section 28 whose most vocal supporters were Cardinal Thomas Winning, the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, and Brian Souter, the wealthy Stagecoach boss and evangelical Christian. They were backed by influential figures like Martin Clarke, editor of Scotland’s best-selling tabloid, the Daily Record, and Jack Irvine, a former tabloid editor. In a BBC interview prior to the submission of the petition, Alan Smith, the treasurer of the Scottish School Boards Association which had initiated the campaign, said the association regarded this repeal as an issue of democracy:

Parents and teachers act as protectors of children's rights. We feel we should be allowed to use our democratic right for consultation and debate with Scotland's new 'listening' government. We feel that Section 28 should not be repealed but we were never consulted about it (BBC News, “Millionaire Funds Anti-Gay Law Campaign”)

73The campaign included billboards, full-page adverts in the press and a large number of articles in the Daily Record. In parallel, the Scottish Executive launched a public consultation which revealed that 75% of respondents supported the repeal of the clause. Brian Souter then organised a private referendum about Section 28, sending ballot papers to every address on the electoral roll in Scotland. The campaign was very tense, with Alexander receiving death threats. She perceptively concluded: "It was classically in the culture wars tradition - magnifying and weaponising an issue that stigmatised a community” (Forrest and Clements). The PPC’s response to the petition was to pass it to the Local Government Committee, whose answer was minimal and consisted in contacting the petitioners to inform them “that their views had been taken into account during the Committee consideration of the Ethical Standards in Public Life etc. (Scotland) Bill” (Scottish Parliament, “Petition PE183”).

74Yet the clause was indeed repealed on 21 June 2000, one of the first pieces of legislation enacted by the new Scottish Parliament illustrating its constitutional independence from Westminster and willingness to act on issues of equality. The government thus chose not to follow the request being made in what was then its most signed petition, highlighting its constitutional superiority over such a form of public participation. The petition is also significant insofar as it demonstrates that being supported by influential figures and benefitting from funding, PR and organisational skills is no guarantee of victory. Tim Hopkins and Christopher Clannachan from the Equality Network described this decision in a blog piece celebrating the 25^th anniversary of the repeal of the clause as “a watershed moment for the Parliament—democracy and evidence, versus money and parts of the religious establishment, and democracy and evidence won out”. Significantly, both sides in the campaign claimed to be fighting in the name of democratic principles.

75The episode ultimately underscores that, within the Scottish system, petitions may amplify competing claims to legitimacy, but decision-making authority remains firmly with parliamentary institutions.

Conclusion

76This study thus offers a comprehensive, longitudinal analysis of the Scottish Parliament’s petition system across most of its post-devolution history, from 1999 to 2023. By focusing on six key dimensions, namely the volume and temporal dynamics of petitions, petitioner profiles, thematic and policy content of petitions, signature patterns, parliamentary responses, and the most-supported cases, it draws a multi-faceted portrait of usage over time.

77The analysis detailed in this article reveals that despite the attention paid to the founding principles of the post-devolution Scottish Parliament, uptake of the petition system remained limited over the period under consideration, in keeping with other such systems but in marked contrast with the Westminster one. Potential explanations for this downward trend are offered and point to issues regarding the visibility of the system and broader concerns over knowledge of the Scottish Parliament, its role and power, the impact of a vague definition of outcome, as well as increased filtering by the petition committee over time.

78The article also addresses concerns over the possibility for petition systems to be appropriated by organisations at the expense of more spontaneous grassroot activism, describing a variety of practices, positioning, and topics by such organisations and concluding that though evidence of concerted action can be found, individuals and voluntary organisations are in fact prominent, with repeat petitioners and organisations in a small minority.

79In addition, work on the contents of petitions through their titles highlights the interaction in Scotland of local and national levels of action and identifies the areas of concern for citizens and organisations, with most petitions related to health, justice, communities, housing, education, transport, and the environment.

80Regarding patterns of mobilisation via petition signing, exploration of the available data shows that most petitions obtain few signatures, but that a small number manages to attract a lot, though less extensively in the last five years under consideration. It also makes it possible to get a more nuanced view of the initial perception of a sharp drop in petition signing, demonstrating a concentration of mobilisation with greater inequality in engagement.

81As far as response to petitions is concerned, though parliamentary debates have been organised and evidence of successful outcome for petitions exists, the primary function of the PPC is primarily one of information gathering on the issues being raised via a variety of means and raising concerns with the relevant departments when MSPs or MPs have not managed to do so.

82Finally, insight into the most popular petitions between 1999 and 2023 provides additional understanding of the petition process in Scotland with signs of strategic use of the system for coordinated campaigns and lobbying as well as the potential for petitions to attract influential backers and media attention, though such support and popularity has proved at times insufficient to produce the requested outcome, particularly as government and Parliament might be careful to safeguard their constitutional roles. This also demonstrates that petitions can give a voice to members of local communities and offer a democratic outlet for their cause although the workings of committees can be roundabout and discouraging.

83In conclusion, this study highlights both the strengths and limitations of the Scottish Parliament’s petition system as a tool for democratic engagement. More comprehensive and reliable data would nonetheless be welcome to better understand such issues and further the promises of accountability and transparency made when the Scottish Parliament was reconvened. However, after the 2021 election, the PPC became the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee to reflect its growing focus on deliberative democracy, particularly via citizen panels, and “other forms of participative engagement” (Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee 9). The time when the petition system was viewed as a key tool for citizen engagement in Scotland may thus be drawing to a close.