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Petition for second EU referendum crashes House of Commons website
Signatures pass 200,000 as high volume of people visiting petitions website causes outage
Round two? The Commons website crashed after experiencing a higher volume of simultaneous users than ever before. Photograph: Isabel Infantes/PA
Friday 24 June 2016 18.48 EDT
A campaign for a second EU referendum caused the House of Commons petitions website to crash after it experienced a higher volume of simultaneous users than ever before.
The petition passed the 200,000 mark on Friday evening, with a map of the voting indicating that most activity was in London – where most boroughs backed remain in the referendum.
A House of Commons spokeswoman said earlier: “The site was temporarily down due to exceptionally high volumes of simultaneous users on a single petition, significantly higher than on any previous occasion.
“The UK parliament and the Government Digital Service are aware of the issue and are working hard to resolve the problems as quickly as possible.”
The page, set up by William Oliver Healey, reads: “We the undersigned call upon HM Government to implement a rule that if the Remain or Leave vote is less than 60% based on a turnout less than 75%, there should be another referendum.”
If a petition receives more than 100,000 signatures, it will be considered for debate in parliament.
The Petitions Committee considers all petitions that have received 100,000 signatures by Friday afternoon, at its subsequent meeting.
The next meeting is on Tuesday 28 June, where the committee has the power to schedule petitions for debate in Westminster Hall on a Monday from 4.30pm, for up to three hours. |
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