Inspiration
The announcement of possible changes to immigration policy triggered my interest in UK Parliament petitions. The Prime Minister has announced a white paper with major changes to immigration laws, which could affect people already living in the UK, including skilled workers. The announcement has caused concern among the immigrant community.
On May 23, 2025, a petition opposing the proposed changes was opened on the UK Parliament petitions website. It collected over 100,000 signatures within just two days – enough to qualify for a parliamentary debate. After this important milestone, I began to wonder how long it typically takes the government to respond and schedule a debate once a petition reaches the threshold. To explore and share this and other insights, I created a UK Parliament Petitions Viewer app to visualize petition statistics. Not all the insights presented in this article are visible in the app, but they can be reproduced using the CSV file available for download from the app.
All statistics below are provided based on the data as of 3 June 2025 (20:00).
5 Insights
1. Petitions are one of the ways for British society to make its voice heard by the government on a range of issues: These petitions have addressed a wide variety of topics, from the legalization of cannabis to the calling of a new parliamentary election 🙂
The petition to call a General Election gathered an incredible number of signatures – over 3 million – out of the UK’s population of 68 million. And yes, this petition was debated in Parliament. The petition regarding the use of cannabis was not debated because it did not even reach the minimum threshold of 10,000 signatures required for a government response.
2. On certain issues, society wants its voice to be heard even more strongly. The main metric is the number of signatures, as it shows how engaged the public is. However, once a petition hits 100,000 signatures and qualifies for a parliamentary debate, any additional signatures have less impact on the outcome.
In this case, another important measure is how quickly a petition reaches 10,000 signatures for a government response and 100,000 for a parliamentary debate. The faster it reaches these thresholds, the more urgent the issue appears. A quick rise in signatures shows that the public wants the matter addressed as soon as possible.
All these petitions differ significantly from the average petition based on these metrics. As you can see, some of them are on both lists, indicating that these issues are very important to British society.
3. It takes time for petitions to prompt action. On average, it takes about 20 days government to respond after a petition reaches 10,000 signatures. For petitions that reach 100,000 signatures, it usually takes around 66 days before they are debated in Parliament. However, these timelines can vary significantly between different government departments.
As shown, the average response time for government departments varies a lot – from just 8 days to as many as 39. This difference doesn’t seem to depend only on how many petitions a department receives. In fact, the department with the slowest response time had just one petition. A similar pattern can be seen with parliamentary debates. For example, the Cabinet Office had three petitions debated, with an average wait of 36 days. Meanwhile, the Department for Work and Pensions had only one petition debated, but it took 106 days. This suggests that the complexity of the issue may also affect how quickly things move.
4. Not only the number of signatures but also the number of petitions matters. Most petitions may go unacknowledged by the government if they do not meet the required threshold for a response or parliamentary debate. However, the overall number of petitions by department shows which areas attract society attention.
For instance, the Department of Health and Social Care received 248 petitions – the highest number among all departments. However, with around 430,000 signatures, this department ranks only 7th among all departments by the number of signatures. This indicates that society has a broad range of concerns related to this sector. There may also be cases of multiple similar petitions. However, a moderation mechanism is in place to ensure duplicate petitions are rejected.
5. Each petition has its own path. Some take months to reach 10,000 signatures, then suddenly jump to over 100,000 in just a few days. Others reach both milestones quickly but then stop gaining support. Timelines also vary not only in how the public responds, but in how the government acts. Some petitions take around five months to be moderated, while others are processed in just six days. Even within the same department, response times can range from 13 to 81 days.
In most cases, the government’s response states that it is either already working on the issue or that it will not take action because the current policy is considered more effective than the suggestion made. Nevertheless, these varied petitions reflect the genuine – and sometimes conflicting – interests and concerns of British society.
It would be interesting to compare regional differences, such as which petitions are more popular in different UK counties. This analysis is possible using the JSON files available on the UK Parliament Petitions website, which include regional data.
Another valuable angle would be to explore the distribution of signatures over time and identify the sources from which voters are coming. As shown in the table above, some petitions remain unnoticed for months and then suddenly attract hundreds of thousands of signatures within a few days. Understanding why this happens would offer meaningful insight. Unfortunately, this kind of data is not publicly available.
Conclusion
Feel free to use the UK Parliament Petitions Viewer app and the embedded CSV file to conduct your own analysis and uncover additional insights. The app is now updated every hour. If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.
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