The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has apologised after publishing a series of social media posts that called the Prime Minister and two other ministers “liars”.
The thread on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, accused Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, along with ministers Michael Gove and Therese Coffey, of weakening environmental protections.
In the post, the charity said of Sunak, Gove and Coffey: “You lie, and you lie, and you lie again. And we’ve had enough.”
The statement, which at the time of publishing has been shared by more than 18,000 people, prompted strong reactions on social media.
The RSPB was praised by some campaigners, including the clean rivers advocate Feargal Sharkey, who congratulated the charity for “taking a stand”, the journalist and ex-Labour Party strategist Alastair Campbell, and the former leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas.
But the charity also faced criticism, with the Conservative MP Mark Jenkinson calling on the Charity Commission to remove the RSPB’s charitable status.
An RSPB trustee, Ben Caldecott, publicly criticised the post on X, saying it was “simply not an appropriate contribution to our public discourse from such an important and highly respected organisation”.
Caldecott said in his post: “We can strongly disagree and make our case without calling people ‘LIARS!’ As a trustee I have raised this issue urgently with the CEO and Chair, among others.”
The RSPB later apologised for the original post, writing on X: “We are in a nature and climate emergency and that demands urgent action. The RSPB is deeply frustrated by the government’s reneging on its environmental promises. But that frustration led us to attack the people not the policy.
“This falls below the standard we set ourselves and for that we apologise. We will continue to campaign vigorously on behalf of nature but we will always do so in a polite and considered manner.”
Speaking this morning on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Beccy Speight, chief executive of the RSPB, said a government proposal to amend habitat regulations had frustrated the charity, but that the framing of its post on X was “incorrect and inappropriate”.
She said of the proposed policy change: “The reason that has made us so frustrated and led to that original tweet is that it completely goes against the commitments that the government has made many times in the past not to weaken environmental protections, most recently when the Retained EU Law bill was going through in the summer.
“So, this completely contravenes those commitments and that’s what’s led us to be so frustrated and so angry about the proposed amendment coming through.”
But, Speight said: “The reason that we issued our apology is that we do believe that the nature of public discourse does matter and that we have a role to play in that, and that we campaign on policy, not on people.
“So, the framing of that tweet, where we called out individual people, we felt was incorrect and inappropriate, and we apologise for that.”
A Charity Commission spokesperson told Third Sector: “We are aware of social media activity by the RSPB and will assess this matter to determine if there is a regulatory role for the commission.”