Campaigners trying to halt the proposed £32 billion high speed rail line have had to start their petition from scratch due to the relaunch of the Government’s official e-petition website.

Prime Minister David Cameron pledged before last year’s election that any petition which attracted more than 100,000 signatures would trigger a debate in Parliament.

At least 100,000 are thought to have signed the HS2 petition, which is partly on paper.

But now only petitions sent via the website will be considered.

Campaigners calling for the line between London, Birmingham and the north to be scrapped said they had got the required number of signatures on the old online petition and should have been able to get a debate by MPs about the merits of the line, called HS2.

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