Petition hits 1.5 million signatures as it becomes one of the biggest on government website

A petition to stop Boris Johnson's proroguing parliament has hit 1.5 million signatures, just a day after the prime minister announced his plans.

The petition, which was created by Mark Johnston on parliament's official petition website, states that parliament should not be prorogued unless there is another extension of the Brexit deadline or the idea of leaving the European Union is scrapped altogether.

The e-petition on gained 100,000 signatures in just a few hours, the threshold it needed for it to be debated by MPs, and that number continues to climb.

Thousands of people protested against the plans on Wednesday evening, with more taking place on Thursday evening.

It comes as Jacob Rees-Mogg dismissed the outrage as "phoney".

He said the move was not intended to limit the time available for MPs to debate Brexit, but will allow the government to tackle other issues.

"I think the outrage is phoney and it is created by people who don't want us to leave the European Union and are trying very hard to overturn the referendum result and don't want the benefits of leaving the European Union."

He added: "Parliament wasn't going to be sitting for most of this time anyway. This is completely constitutional and proper."

With more than one million signatures, the e-petition is now one of parliament's top five most-signed proposals.

The petition is presently growing even faster than the Revoke Article 50 petition, which was the biggest ever submitted to parliament, and gathered more than six million signatures in March.

Popular areas for signing the petition include Glasgow, London, Sheffield, Cambridge, Oxford, Bath, Brighton and Bristol.

- The petition can be signed here.