Andy
Retired committee member
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.c...sabled-people-following-katie-price-petition/Disability hate crime campaigners are to give evidence to MPs next month as part of a new inquiry into the online abuse of disabled people.
The Commons petitions committee has launched the investigation following a petition set up by former model Katie Price which was signed by more than 220,000 people.
Price’s petition called on the government to create a new criminal offence covering online abuse, and to set up a register of offenders.
She and her disabled son Harvey are to give evidence to the committee on 6 February about the disablist online abuse he has experienced.
Anne Novis, a leading disability hate crime campaigner and adviser on disability to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the Metropolitan police, will also be giving evidence to the committee, as chair of Inclusion London.
Novis, also a coordinator of the Disability Hate Crime Network, plans to share details with MPs on the committee of Facebook sites that have been “set up to demean disabled people”, and of disablist attacks by some newspapers.
She also plans to raise concerns about government rhetoric around its social security reforms, which she said has demeaned disabled people, “giving permission to others to do the same online and elsewhere”.
She said that such rhetoric and abuse “must be challenged as totally unacceptable in today’s society”.
So would unfounded claims of harassment and death threats, made by certain BPS researchers, count I wonder?