Lies, damn lies and petitions

The news that the founder of online campaign platform 38 degrees, has been sacked for gross misconduct will be of interest to those who have been handed lectures in morality as 38 degrees has generated online campaigns against hunting.

More important, however, than the hypocrisy is the effect it has had on politics. 38 degrees, and the many copycat sites it has spawned, use social media and their databases to generate large numbers of responses to petitions and consultations, and to send targeted emails to politicians. This tactic has undoubtedly been very successful in convincing politicians, in particular, that certain issues have public support. Two recent examples of such online campaigning that the Alliance has been involved with have, however, cast very serious doubt on whether they actually represent anything of the kind.

The first example involved a petition to 'ban pheasant shooting on Welsh public land', which was accepted by the National Assembly for Wales' Petitions Committee. The creators claimed that the petition had attracted 12,706 signatures, but through a Freedom of Information request we eventually found that an astonishing 88.3% of the total signatures on that petition were from people outside of Wales. Only 1,487 of the signatories had Welsh postcodes, 80% were from other UK countries with a further 8% from outside of the UK. Before we were able to expose this petition, and force the National Assembly to change its policy on which petitions it will accept, the Environment Minister Hannah Blythyn had taken the extraordinary decision to overrule her own statutory advisor, Natural Resources Wales, and instruct it to impose a ban on pheasant shooting in opposition to the conclusions of its own review. What role the petition made in her decision only she can know, but we can be certain it was not helpful to shooting.

Meanwhile, North of the border another Environment Minister, Mairi Gougeon, was ignoring the findings of another review. The Scottish Government consulted on Lord Bonomy's review of hunting legislation which concluded that imposing restrictions on the number of dogs that could be used to flush foxes to guns "could seriously compromise effective pest control in the country", and then announced it was going to impose exactly those restrictions.

In making that announcement the Minister referred to "public concern and doubts" rather than evidence, of which there is none to support her case. When the analysis of the consultation was eventually published the truth behind that "public concern" became clear. The consultation received 18,787 responses of which 18,497 (98%) came through five different organised email campaigns. The remaining 290 'substantive' (i.e. personal) responses were submitted by 25 organisations and 265 individuals. A further Freedom of Information request confirmed that the Scottish Government cannot identify those responsible for the 18,497 e-mail responses. The Scottish Government has no idea who these people are, where they are from or even if they actually exist. In reality 260 identifiable people responded with a fairly even split for those seeking change and those opposing it. Certainly there was no overwhelming support for further restrictions on hunting nor any evidence that such a view represented the will of the Scottish public.

38 degrees was founded in 2009, and similar campaign tactics have been used by other organisations for many years now. Politicians have had plenty of time to wise up to the fact that they are being played by online campaigns. They need to stop being influenced by unattributable emails, and stop using manufactured online campaigns to justify their own prejudices.

Tim Bonner

Chief Executive

Follow me at @CA_TimB