'It's a fiddle'

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GOVERNMENT petitions are being abused online by activists organising ‘mass signings’ to trigger Government debates, throwing the recent success of a petition to ban Donald Trump from the UK in to doubt.

In a matter of minutes reporters from Express.co.uk were able to sign Government petitions multiple times, using the same name and postcode.

Our investigation was triggered after it was claimed leftwing activists were bragging on social media that they had signed the petition to ban Donald Trump from entering the UK as many as 50 times each.

The Trump-ban petition was signed 562,000 times, becoming the most signed Government online petition since the site’s launch in 2012.

The petition was started early this month when Trump said Muslim people should be banned from America Islamic State (ISIS), also known as Daesh, is defeated.

He later sparked further controversy when he claimed he was “doing good for the Muslims” with his radical ideas.

Express journalists were able to sign petitions including ‘Ban Donald Trump from entering the UK’ and others to support junior doctors and take children out of school during term time many times each.

The website promises that any petition that receives more than 10,000 signatures will receive a written response, and once it reaches 100,000, the issue will be debated in parliament.

Those who have tested the fault in the system themselves have said they were left ‘amazed’ at how easy it was to abuse a ‘powerful tool’ which can lead to Government debate in the house.

A local government source claimed some Labour activists frequently organise mass signings of petitions in order to push them through to Parliament, and this was what happened to the Trump petition.

He said: “I was quite staggered. It seems to be representative of everything in this country – a fiddle.

“I thought there was no way it would work so I tried it on some of my different email addresses. It staggered me that a mechanism used to get a debate in parliament is open to abuse.

“You could sit there creating email addresses all night.

“One friend told me he had done it more than 50 times.”

In 2012 the Government launched the petition site in a bid to get the voices of communities into the House of Commons.