Tory leader David Cameron has announced he will go further and faster than Labour with proposed e-democracy reforms.

In place of Labour's limited promise to introduce a trial with selected e-petitions debated in the Commons' second chamber in Westminster Hall, he has said that any petition with a million signatures will allow members of the public to introduce a bill on which MPs will be required to vote; and any petition that collects 100,000 signatures will be eligible to be formally debated in the Commons itself.

Conservative spin doctors have claimed that the way Commons leader Harriet Harman has introduced a series of orders approving proposals is designed to slow progress, since each of the 17 separate reform motions could require a debate and a vote, with time being extremely limited because of the fast-approaching general election.

Only four of them relate to e-democracy. The others concern modernising the select committee system and other procedures within Westminster.

There have been proposals on the subject for nearly two years and MPs could have acted on them, but progress was blocked by Ms Harman.

Cameron upped the e-democracy stakes in a speech at East London University in which he told students: "It's absurd that a tiny percentage of the population crafts legislation that will apply to the entire population. Instead of locking people out of the process, we need to invite them in."

His thresholds are far lower than those referred to in a recent Commons Modernisation Committee report, which labelled a comparable provision requiring local authorities to consider petitions supported by five per cent of the local electorate, "oppressive", and which on the national stage would require the signatures of millions of voters.

It also referred disparagingly to the ability to attract large numbers in support of a cause in this electronic age, reflecting politicians' fears at the way the 10 Downing Street e-petition opposed to road pricing attracted 1.8 million supporters, which killed off the policy.

The Modernisation Committee is holding a hearing on the progress of its ideas on Wednesday.