House Rules

The purpose of this site is to enable as many people as possible to make their ideas known. Ideas will be accepted and published, providing they meet the terms and conditions below.  The Downing Street online petitions service provides experience of how people use government sites that call for information.  So the rules below are based closely on the 'Downing Street Terms'.  Our T&C will evolve as we learn from the competition.

There will be no attempt to exclude critical views and decisions to accept or reject will not be made on a party political basis.

However, to protect this service from abuse, ideas and comments must satisfy some basic conditions.

To submit an idea, you must use the online form to provide:

• the title or subject of the idea;

• a clear and concise statement describing the idea. It should state what problem the idea seeks to solve, and who it will be useful to. The idea will be returned to you to edit if it is unclear;

• the author's contact address (in case we need to contact you about the idea. This will not be placed on the website);

The information in a idea must be submitted in good faith. In order for the idea service to comply with the law and with the Civil Service Code, you must not include:

• Party political material. This is a Government site. Party political content cannot be published, under the normal rules governing the Civil Service.

• potentially libellous, false, or defamatory statements;

• information which may be protected by an injunction or court order (for example, the identities of children in custody disputes);

• material which is potentially confidential, commercially sensitive, or which may cause personal distress or loss;

• any commercial endorsement, promotion of any product, service or publication;

• the names of family members of elected representatives or officials of public bodies;

• the names of individuals, or information where they may be identified, in relation to criminal accusations; and

• language which is offensive, intemperate, or provocative. This not only includes obvious swear words and insults, but any language to which people reading it could reasonably take offence (we believe it is possiblefor anything, no matter how radical, to be phrased politely).

We reserve the right to reject:

• ideas that are similar to and/or overlap with an existing idea;

• wording that is impossible to understand;

• statements that amount to advertisements; and

• ideas which are intended to be humorous, or which have no point about government policy (however witty these are, it is not appropriate to use a publicly-funded website for purely frivolous purposes);

We will strive to ensure that ideas that do not meet our criteria are not accepted, but where an idea is accepted which contains misleading information we reserve the right to take it down, pending a redraft by the original author.