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Disability activists shame MSPs for closing anti-Atos petition

DISABILITY activists have cried “shame” on naysaying MSPs for scotching a petition to oust welfare privateer Atos from the Glasgow Games’ limelight.

Campaigners Glasgow Against Atos expressed dismay yesterday after their petition to scrap Atos as a Commonwealth Games sponsor came to an untimely end.

The panel of MSPs yesterday voted to close the petition without further discussion.

Chairman and Labour MSP David Stewart said the committee would advise Glasgow 2014’s organisers of the petitioners’ “strong comments.”

But the committee would not meet the campaigners’ key demand to put their case to the Scottish parliament itself, as a change of contractors “could undermine the running of the Commonwealth Games.”

Glasgow Against Atos spokesman Sean Clerkin said the panel deserved to “hang their heads in shame.”

The campaigners had not asked organisers to find a new contractor, he said, only that they drop Atos’s branding as a sponsor.

Protests will continue over the coming weeks with a number of athletes covertly involved, he added.

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