Prime Minister Gordon Brown has proposed a new online e-petitions system that would allow parliament to debate matters raised by ordinary Internet surfers. The suggested change forms a small part of Browns new ideas for constitutional reform.

Unfortunately it all comes too late for the Anti-"Unlimited" broadband petition, which ended with just under 10,000 signatures to the tune of a bland and largely unconstructive government response (here).

However such a move would go along way to allaying fears that the existing system is nothing more than waste of web space, given that it seems to make little or no difference to policy.

It's understood that a threshold of signatures would have to be achieved before a matter is debated, which will probably end up being set quite high.