Blog

Government squandered public education opportunity with dismissive response to anti-Trump State Visit e-petition

19 Feb 2017
Prime Minister Theresa May and President Donald Trump at a press conference during May's first visit to the US since Trump took power

Last week the government had the opportunity to engage directly with 1.8 million citizens. Presented with a communication opportunity on this scale, more thought and effort should have been applied to crafting the message.

Dr Ruth Fox, Director , Hansard Society
,
Director , Hansard Society

Dr Ruth Fox

Dr Ruth Fox
Director , Hansard Society

Ruth is responsible for the strategic direction and performance of the Society and leads its research programme. She has appeared before more than a dozen parliamentary select committees and inquiries, and regularly contributes to a wide range of current affairs programmes on radio and television, commentating on parliamentary process and political reform.

In 2012 she served as adviser to the independent Commission on Political and Democratic Reform in Gibraltar, and in 2013 as an independent member of the Northern Ireland Assembly’s Committee Review Group. Prior to joining the Society in 2008, she was head of research and communications for a Labour MP and Minister and ran his general election campaigns in 2001 and 2005 in a key marginal constituency.

In 2004 she worked for Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign in the battleground state of Florida. In 1999-2001 she worked as a Client Manager and historical adviser at the Public Record Office (now the National Archives), after being awarded a PhD in political history (on the electoral strategy and philosophy of the Liberal Party 1970-1983) from the University of Leeds, where she also taught Modern European History and Contemporary International Politics.

Get our latest research, insights and events delivered to your inbox

Subscribe to our newsletter

We will never share your data with any third-parties.

Share this and support our work

Unfortunately, what the 1.8 million signatories to the anti-Trump state visit e-petition got was a bland, 122-word brush-off that sounded as if it had been written by a grumpy minister forced to stay behind to cook up the lines after class.

It was so poor they didn’t really need to waste 122 words when just 33 would have sufficed. Summed up, ‘the Government believes the US President should be extended the full courtesy of a State Visit; the date and arrangements have not been finalised; and the government does not agree with the petition.’

It is responses like this – that treat the public with dismissive, high-handed disdain – that infuriates people, in this case those who had bothered to sign the petition.

Whether you agree with the e-petition or not, 1.8 million of our fellow citizens clearly felt strongly enough to support it. The request was, as one petitioner put it, ‘responsibly and temperately expressed’ - they hadn’t called for Trump to be banned from Britain, merely that he ‘not be honoured beyond the bare essentials due to his office’.

The government’s response has variously been described to me by correspondents in recent days as ‘rubbish’, ‘dismissive’, ‘anodyne’ and ‘abrupt’. The tone and content conveyed the impression that the government couldn’t be bothered properly engaging with petitioners’ concerns.

E-petitions are a great way to get an issue on to or higher up the political agenda. They can attract public and media attention and serve a useful ‘fire alarm’ function, providing citizens with an opportunity to air their views on a national platform. But they are also a means for our politicians to engage citizens on the issues and to facilitate deliberation on the complexities and nuances that underpin public policy.

With some thought, the government could have sent a fuller, more nuanced response which sought to grapple with the issues surrounding this debate. It’s clear that many people – including lots of MPs and journalists – don’t know how state visits work; how many there have been and by whom; and what role Parliament plays. (My colleague Brigid Fowler has crunched the data so you don't have to!)

Providing some background and context might have been useful; it would at least have given the impression that the government was making an effort to engage and explain the issues. It could have set the matter in historical and foreign policy context: the data suggests, for example, that historically the US has been neglected when it comes to state visits (and in doing so perhaps they might have answered the intriguing question of why Mexico has had four state visits but the US only two!). They might even have referenced the suggestion from the Lord Speaker that the rules governing the use of Westminster Hall and the wider parliamentary estate for State Visits be reviewed, so that the process is more transparent and open in the future. But instead they chose the path of least effort and so squandered a great public education opportunity.

Our annual Audit of Public Engagement shows that the public is generally more likely to sign a petition than they are to engage in most other forms of democratic activity apart from voting. The e-petitions system thus has symbolic as well as practical value in better linking Parliament and the public. Five years ago we published a report What Next for E-petitions? outlining the reforms necessary to improve the system. Many of our proposals, including the setting up of a Petitions Committee, were subsequently adopted wholesale by the House of Commons and form the backbone of the system we have today and which is largely regarded as much more effective than was the case in the last Parliament. But this incident shows there is no room for complacency.

The government has to decide how responsive it is prepared to be to public concerns; it doesn’t have to agree with petitioners, merely be prepared to go the extra mile to communicate with them in a way that seeks to improve their perception of the process. If petitioners don’t get more thoughtful, nuanced responses the system will simply feed the anti-politics mood of cynicism and disdain.

Parliament has significantly enhanced its public engagement efforts through the new Petitions Committee (as Prof. Cristina Leston-Bandeira has explained here). The Government should now do the same. Departments spend millions of pounds hiring consultants to put together public education advertisements for TV and social media. E-petition responses can similarly reach millions of people – so it should start treating the petitioning system as a mass civic education exercise rather than a political nuisance.

Photo Credit: Jay Allen provided under a CreativeCommons licence.

News / Parliament Matters Bulletin: What’s coming up in Parliament this week? 15-19 September 2025

Peers will vote on the assisted dying bill’s Second Reading, while MPs will question the new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood MP and Lord Chancellor David Lammy MP. The Commons will debate the Employment Rights, English Devolution and Community Empowerment, and Sentencing Bills, as Peers examine the Planning and Infrastructure and Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bills. Committees will hear evidence on arms exports to Israel and the Online Safety Act. MPs will also debate an e-petition on SEND support and consider a Ten Minute Rule Bill on child poverty strategy, including removing the two-child limit for Universal Credit. The youngest minister in nearly two centuries will make his first appearance before a Select Committee. ❓ We value your thoughts. Please click here to let us know what you think of the Parliament Matters Bulletin in our reader survey.

14 Sep 2025
Read more

News / Assisted dying bill - special series #16: The Bill makes its debut in the House of Lords - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 106

As Peers embark on a marathon two-day Second Reading debate on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill – the measure that would legalise assisted dying in England and Wales – we are joined by former Clerk of the Parliaments, Sir David Beamish, to decode the drama. With more than two hundred members of the House of Lords lining up to speak, Sir David explains why, despite the intensity of the arguments, no one expects the Bill to be rejected at this stage. Instead, the real fight will come later, after Peers get into the clause-by-clause detail and see what defects can be remedied. Please help us by completing our Listener Survey. It will only take a few minutes.

13 Sep 2025
Read more

Briefings / The assisted dying bill: A guide to the legislative process in the House of Lords

Having passed through the House of Commons, the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill - the Bill to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales - must now go through its legislative stages in the House of Lords. This guide explains the special procedures for legislation in the House of Lords, and for Private Members’ Bills in particular. It answers some frequently asked questions, including how Peers might block the Bill, and gives an explanation of each stage of the process, from Second to Third Reading.

10 Sep 2025
Read more

Briefings / Delegated powers in the assisted dying bill: Issues for the attention of the House of Lords

Like many pieces of primary legislation, the assisted dying bill leaves much of the practical and policy detail to be worked out later by Ministers through regulations. After the Bill’s Second Reading in the House of Commons, we published a briefing which drew attention to two of its delegated powers. But since then the Bill has been heavily amended, prompting new questions: how have its delegated powers evolved, do these changes strengthen or weaken the approach to the delegation of ministerial power, and are further amendments needed and if so, why?

29 Aug 2025
Read more

News / Is Parliament at the root of the country's problems? - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 105

Does Parliament itself lie at the root of some of Britain’s political and economic difficulties? Lord Goodman argues that it does and so makes the case for urgent parliamentary reform. This week we also examine the implications of a Downing Street reshuffle that has created a “Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister,” raising new questions about accountability in the Commons. The discussion ranges from Angela Rayner’s uncertain position, Nigel Farage’s controversial US appearance, and the Greens’ leadership contest, to the growing use of artificial intelligence in parliamentary work. Please help us by completing our Listener Survey. It will only take a few minutes.

05 Sep 2025
Read more