Success for our Campaign: Government backs Citizens’ Initiative and Referendum

For over ten years our Campaign for Citizens’ Initiative and Referendum in Britain has worked to promote genuine direct democracy. So we welcome the inclusion of our major proposals in the coalition agreement of the new Conservative and Liberal-Democrat government.

In short:
The Government backs our proposals for Initiative, Citizens’ Referendum and Recall (sacking) of Members of Parliament!

Three items from the coalition paper:

We will give residents the power to instigate local referendums on any local issue.

We will bring forward early legislation to introduce a power of recall, allowing voters to force a by-election where an MP is found to have engaged in serious wrongdoing and having had a petition calling for a by-election signed by 10% of his or her constituents.

We will ensure that any petition that secures 100,000 signatures will be eligible for formal debate in Parliament. The petition with the most signatures will enable members of the public to table a bill eligible to be voted on in Parliament.
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Campaign work must continue!

The realisation of these coalition proposals would bring considerable improvement to public participation in government. This reform could become a quiet revolution, a move from “steered” democracy to one with practicable, pro-active and veto rights for everyone, in a living, everyday democracy at local and national levels.

In order to ensure that these promises are fulfilled our Campaign will continue. There is a long way to go before legislators in parliament formally introduce genuine citizen-led democracy. Broad public demand for progress on this must become loudly audible. Our Campaign will:
— inform
— educate
— advocate
— lobby
— publish
— research

All of these activities depend on real people doing hard work with professional skill and original flair.

The Campaign for Citizens’ Initiative and Referendum in Britain needs helpers and support, see
http://www.iniref.org/crew.html volunteer
http://www.iniref.org/action.html support
http://www.iniref.org index
Independent of any political party
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