Shame on the Conservative Government - in their new Public Reading Stage for Bills before Parliament. the weasel word is ‘eligible’

Given that 162,820+ citizens signed the petition to drop the NHS Bill, why is it do you think that in the last hour the Backbench Business Committee has voted to block a debate in the House of Commons to Drop the NHS Bill? A Liberal Democrat MP who cast a vote on the committee joined with the Tories to ensure no debate took place. The Lib Dem MP, John Hemming who voted to block a debate on the 162,000+ strong petition argued that the committee should not waste any more time debating the Health and Social Care Bill because other issues such as Human Rights in Russia needed to be debated.

This is one of the very many reasons that this NHS Bill is the grossest violation of democracy the UK has suffered in more than 3 centuries. Only 14% of voters support the bill, the government has no mandate for reforms since page 45 of the Tory manifesto omitted private involvement in the NHS. In addition, this is the least transparent piece of legislation since the Freedom of Information Act, what with the burying of the Risk Register against the Information Commissioner's will & the denial of a debate despite 160,000 signatures.

In August 2010, David Cameron told MPs "One of the points of the new e-petitions website is to make sure that if a certain level of signatures is reached, the matter will be debated in the House, whether we like it or not. That is an important way of empowering people." Sadly, he lied.

By Dr Éoin Clarke (PhD)