Culture secretary Lisa Nandy has pledged to “tighten up the law” in response to some RNLI volunteers and staff members facing online abuse earlier this month.
In particular, she suggested that social media sites would be asked to prevent personal details being shared, known as doxxing, after it was reported that information about some RNLI workers was published online in the wake of the anti-immigration protests organised in Dover and Portsmouth.
Nandy is understood to have chaired a meeting to challenge major social media companies to discuss the changes.
Speaking to Times Radio yesterday, Nandy said: “I have made a commitment to the RNLI and to, not just charities but public sector workers, police officers and others who are being routinely harassed and abused online in the course of work, that we will tighten up the law.
“All of the different social media companies have completely different terms of service, different standards that they apply to online hatred directed at individuals.
“Some of them will automatically remove that content. Some of them, frankly, won't.”
Nandy has also written to the RNLI, expressing support for the work its volunteers do in rescuing people from the English Channel and other bodies of water.
An RNLI spokesperson told Civil Society that the charity “is extremely grateful for the proactive support and kindness we have received” from Nandy “in the immediate aftermath of the incident in Portsmouth, and over the past 11 days”.
The spokesperson said that the charity had been liaising with Nandy’s team on some of the cases of online abuse to RNLI workers, and confirmed that “we have recently received a letter of solidarity from Lisa Nandy addressed to all staff and volunteers at the RNLI for which we are most grateful.”
RNLI chief executive Peter Sparkes previously said that recent events in Dover and Portsmouth had “generated deliberate misinformation and a misunderstanding about the RNLI.”
“Sadly, as a result, some of our volunteers and staff have been the subject of online and, in the worst cases, physical abuse,” he added at the time.
RNLI recently reported that it had seen a “significant” increase in donations following its volunteers and staff being targeted by anti-immigration protestors.
A petition in support of the charity's volunteers and staff has garnered over 145,000 signatures.
