Labour MP Fiona Mactaggart has admitted to being “Twitter naïve” after her pledge to donate £1 to Comic Relief for every retweet in a half-hour period ended up costing her more than £14,000.

During last Friday’s Red Nose Day Mactaggart, who was the Home Office parliamentary under-secretary with responsibility for charities from 2003 to 2006, tweeted to her 2,500-odd followers:

The message was retweeted 14,268 times, before 9pm and while the Labour MP admitted to being a “Twitter naïve” she said she had “no regrets” about the stunt and tweeted: "Thank you all for making me more generous."

She later told the BBC it was something she did “on the spur of the moment” and that she had “already planned to give Comic Relief £10,000 - it was 40 per cent more than I had planned to give but actually one of the things about Comic Relief is that people take risks for a great cause”.

Mactaggart added that she hoped it might encourage wealthier people to give larger sums to charity, saying: “Actually one of the things that I’m most depressed about is that poorer people give a larger proportion of their income to charity than richer people and I hope what I did might spur some other wealthy people to give more.”

 

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