A disabled woman has succeeded in her legal fight to force the government to clarify the law on assisted suicide. But anti-euthanasia campaigners have warned that the ruling could add to the fear many disabled people feel over attempts to weaken the law. Debbie Purdy, who has multiple sclerosis, wanted the director of public prosecutions [...]
23
Jul 2009
23
Jul 2009
The pressure on Trevor Phillips to resign as head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has intensified, with another commissioner standing down over concerns about his leadership. Ben Summerskill, chief executive of the gay rights charity Stonewall, is the latest board member to publicly criticise Phillips. Summerskill said he would leave the EHRC [...]
A disabled asylum-seeker has been deported to Afghanistan, despite desperate last-minute pleas from disability rights campaigners. The charity RADAR wrote to Alan Johnson, the home secretary, calling for Abbas Sharifi’s deportation to be postponed. And members of the Disabled Asylum Seekers and Refugees Network in Sheffield, where Sharifi had lived, made frantic last-minute efforts through [...]
Disabled activists have attacked the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) for weakening its policy on assisted suicide, despite only receiving backing for the move from about 0.15 per cent of its members. The RCN has changed its position from opposition to a position where it neither supports nor opposes a change in the law to [...]
23
Jul 2009
Sainsbury’s has become the second of the big four supermarket chains to introduce widespread fines for shoppers who abuse accessible parking spaces. The retail giant has set up a squad of uniformed enforcers on motorbikes who will patrol about 400 of its 500 carparks across the UK, and issue £50 fines to vehicles using accessible [...]
