THE Downing Street aide branded a “prat” by a minister for encouraging the public to start official online petitions is Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, a former adviser to Peter Mandelson.

An unlikely combination of the head of Google and Wegg-Prosser are behind Tony Blair’s decision to allow petitions on the Downing Street website.

The most popular petition, protesting against government plans to introduce new road charging, is expected to attract almost 2m signatures before it closes on Tuesday.

Despite the mass opposition, Douglas Alexander, the transport secretary, has made it clear it will not persuade him to change the policy.

One anonymous minister, thought to be in the Department for Transport, told a newspaper last week that whoever came up with the petition idea was a “prat”. However, friends of Wegg-Prosser, a No 10 aide, claim he is still a backer of the e-petitions and believes they will form a key part of Blair’s legacy.

The prime minister decided to embrace the idea after a meeting with Eric Schmidt, the chairman and chief executive of Google, last October.

Schmidt, who is worth more than £2.5 billion, was in Britain to address the Conservative party’s annual conference.

Wegg-Prosser, 32, nicknamed “Oofy” after Oofy Prosser, the PG Wodehouse character, was charged with putting the plan into action.

This weekend a well-placed Downing Street source said: “The prime minister had a conversation about six months ago with Eric Schmidt, and he said you guys have to completely upgrade the way in which you communicate with the public. Blair thinks the e-petitions stuff is absolutely fantastic. We wanted a way of engaging with

people and having a direct dialogue.” Wegg-Prosser was an adviser to Mandelson in the 1990s and one of the few who knew his boss had borrowed hundreds of thousands of pounds from Geof-frey Robinson, the paymaster-general, to buy a house. Wegg-Prosser’s father was the solicitor involved in the deal. Mandelson has long suspected the loan story was leaked by someone close to Gordon Brown. In turn, Wegg-Prosser is disliked by Brownites over his role in allegedly besmirching the chancellor. Douglas Alexander, whose transport department is thought to be responsible for the “prat” comment, is a protégé of Brown. The department declined to disown the comment last week. Wegg-Prosser left politics for journalism after Mandelson resigned in 1998, but is now No 10’s director of strategic communications and is responsible for Blair’s new web-friendly strategy and for planning the prime minister’s legacy. Last week a friend said: “He’s pretty relaxed about the [prat] comment. His view is he’s been called a lot worse.” So far more than 3,000 petitions have been set up on the Downing Street website, including one calling for pet shops to be allowed to sell elephants. The e-petitions have shot to prominence as a result of the popularity of the road-pricing petition, which calls on the government to abandon “sinister and wrong” plans to charge motorists by the mile. The petition was started by Peter Roberts, a member of the Association of British Drivers. The association is against speed cameras and the current speed limits and calls global warming the “biggest con-trick ever perpetrated on the human race”.

The government believes the scheme, which is unlikely to be introduced nationally until 2015, is necessary to cut congestion and harmful emissions. The prime minister is now planning to email everyone who has signed to set out the case for road-charging.

Tomorrow Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, will expand the capital’s congestion charge zone from Westminster. The £8 levy will be extended west of Park Lane, taking in the wealthy areas of Kensington, Chelsea, Knightsbridge, Notting Hill, Bayswater, Belgravia and Pimlico.

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