Grove Pupils Contribution to Petitions Committee Applauded

We are very proud of the work from students at Grove Academy in response to the House of Commons Petitions Committee inquiry into Tackling Online Abuse; and the committee were impressed with our pupils' contributions. 

Well done to all involved!

Dear students of Grove Academy,

I'm Catherine McKinnell. I'm the MP for Newcastle North and I'm also the Chair of the House of Commons Petitions Committee.

The Petitions Committee is a group of MPs who oversee the petitions that people start online, some of which then get debated in Parliament. Sometimes we also look into an issue raised by a petition when we think there's more to investigate.

We've been investigating the problem of online abuse because hundreds of thousands of people have signed petitions asking for the Government to do more about it. This has shown us how big a problem it is.

You might remember that we asked you to share your views about abuse that you see online. You looked at lots of different possible solutions to online abuse and then you came up with your own actions you'd like the Government and social media companies to take.

Your teachers shared your comments and views directly with us. They really helped us understand the problem and make recommendations to the Government.

I'd like to say a huge thank you for all the work you put in and for how much it helped us!

We've now published a report which sums up everything we learned about online abuse from the experts we talked to during our investigation. It also sums up the things we heard from you and the other students who fed back to us. In the report we make recommendations to the Government about what it should do to reduce online abuse and make the online world a safer place to be for young people like you.

The Government has to respond to our report but it doesn't have to do everything that we recommend. When it's responded, we'll let you know so you can see what it thought about our report, and how it plans to act on our recommendations.

Read a condensed version of the report – if you scroll down to the bottom you can see some of the comments which you made which really impacted us, and our top recommendations to the Government: https://ukparliament.shorthandstories.com/tackling-online-abuse-petitions-report/index.html

Read the full report – at the end of the report is an “annex” which is where you can find the summary of everything that you and other students told us: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/8669/documents/88038/default/

 Read our news story which sums everything up: https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/326/petitions-committee/news/160612/failure-to-prevent-repeated-online-abuse-should-lead-to-fines-for-social-media-companies-say-mps/

Thank you again on behalf of the whole Petitions Committee. You were a vital part of a parliamentary committee inquiry into one of the biggest issues we face today.

 

Yours,

Catherine