Charity watchdog rules RSPB Rishi Sunak liar tweet was ‘inappropriate’

In a finding by the charity watchdog that will surprise few, a tweet posted by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) which referred to Rishi Sunak as a “liar”, has been found to be inappropriate.

Last year, the bird charity posted a series of bizarre posts on Twitter, featuring an image of the former prime minister alongside “LIARS!” stencilled in bold red capital letters, with a caption that said “You lie, and you lie, and you lie again. And we’ve had enough.”

The tweet, which also featured two other ministers, Michael Gove and Thérèse Coffey, was posted in August 2023, supposedly in response to the government’s move to lift anti-pollution restrictions on house building.

At the time of the original tweets, the charity’s chief executive Beccy Speight was forced to apologise publicly after her board of 16 trustees joined politicians and other rural organisations in condemnation of the post. RSPB trustees had previously briefed the media that 'an over-zealous junior staff member' had gone rogue while bosses were on holiday.

The Countryside Alliance accused the RSPB of "ignoring the elephant in the room", questioning how the charity could justify such an outburst while maintaining a "working partnership" with United Utilities, a relationship which includes managing parts of its vast portfolio of land, including the Haweswater Reservoir in the Lake District, Cumbria.

Data released by the Environment Agency showed that United Utilities, based in the north-west of England, owned half of the country’s 20 pipes that spilled the most sewage last year and had pumped waste into the River Ellen, near the Lake District, for nearly 7,000 hours.

Only a month before the outburst, the RSPB and United Utilities published a joint press release about water voles just one day after the firm was fined £800,000 for illegally abstracting 22 billion litres of water from boreholes in Lancashire.

The Alliance called on the RSPB to publicly call-out United Utilities with "the same vigour as its tweet aimed at the government yesterday", adding "their silence has been noticed. Until they take that important step, the RSPB is open to the accusation of hypocrisy."

On Wednesday, the Charity Commission said the "tone and nature of RSPB’s post was inappropriate and had not been signed off at the appropriate level within the charity". It stopped short, however, of imposing any sanctions for the post, which led to the RSPB issuing an apology and saying it fell short of its own standards.

Having concluded its regulatory compliance case last month into the incident, the watchdog said: "We closed our case noting that the charity’s trustees had taken sufficient remedial action.

"This included the charity issuing an immediate public apology, carrying out an independent investigation and implementing changes to strengthen internal policies with use of commission guidance."