Petition For Second EU Referendum Is Being Investigated For Fraud

Allegations of fraud in connection with a petition calling for a second EU referendum has forced the House of Commons petitions committee to conduct an investigation.

The three million strong petition pushing for a second EU referendum has been signed by thousands of people outside of Britain, including North Korea, Russia and China.

There were for example 39,000 signatories from the Vatican City, which only has a population of 800.

Also 23,000 signatories to the petition were from isolationist and Internet-censored North Korea.

At the time of writing 77,000 signatures had already been removed.

There are more than 3.2 million signatures are on the petition, but Prime Minister David Cameron has said there will be no second vote.

The BBC reports:

Helen Jones, who chairs the cross-party petitions committee, said in a statement posted on Twitter that it was taking the allegations “very seriously”.

‘A range of views’

“People adding fraudulent signatures to this petition should know that they undermine the cause they pretend to support,” she said.

The committee will consider the petition at its meeting next week and decide whether to schedule a debate on it, Ms Jones said.

“That doesn’t mean that the committee will be deciding whether or not it agrees with the petition – just whether or not it should be debated.

“Any debate would allow a range of views to be expressed.”

A number of people on Twitter have pointed out that some people appear to have signed the petition from outside the UK.

Only British citizens or UK residents are permitted to sign the petition, including Britons based abroad.

The House of Commons petitions committee said it will continue to monitor the petition for “suspicious activity”.

The petition has more signatures than any other on the parliamentary website.

A House of Commons spokeswoman said the petition was created on 24 May. There were 22 signatures on it at the time the referendum result was announced.

The petition’s website states it was set up by an individual called William Oliver Healey, and says: “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.”

Thursday saw a 72.2% turnout, significantly higher than the 66.1% turnout at last year’s general election, but below the 75% mark suggested by Mr Healey as a threshold.

In a statement posted on Facebook, a campaigner for the English Democrats party identifying himself as Oliver Healey says he started the petition “when it was looking unlikely that ‘leave’ were going to win, with the intention of making it harder for ‘remain’ to further shackle us to the EU”.

He says the petition has since been “hijacked by the remain campaign”.