Telford MP Lucy Allan defends adding death threat

An MP accused of faking a death threat has defended modifying a message from a constituent.

Conservative MP for Telford, Lucy Allan, posted an email ending with the words "unless you die" on Facebook.

The email's author denied writing the final line. Mrs Allan admitted adding it - but said it came from another email sent to her that day.

The BBC is yet to see the email, which Mrs Allan said police were investigating.

Mrs Allan said she shared the email from Adam Watling, son of Telford & Wrekin Labour councillor Paul Watling, in a bid to stop normalising online abuse.

But Adam, writing under the alias Rusty Shackleford, said he had not written "unless you die".

He told the BBC: "Wherever the 'unless you die' line came from, it was absolutely not from any of my correspondence to Lucy. I am a peaceful person and would never make a threat of that nature."

Mrs Allan responded to allegations that she had doctored the email by saying.

"I posted actual comments made to me on the same day, although not in the same email. Comments were added to the post as they came in. I posted them to show examples of the type of unacceptable online abuse that comes in most days and that most people tolerate silently.

"The comments were not posted to discredit any individual. "Rusty" could have been anyone, or a wholly fictional person. he chose to identify himself and came forward with a surname. At that point I took the post down."

She said there had now been a campaign against her, and the police were investigating.

The Facebook posts have since been deleted.