Charity initially said it stood by the comments

A leading charity chief has apologised after her organisation called Rishi Sunak and government ministers “liars”. 

Beccy Speight, the chief executive of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, distanced herself from the post on social media platform X saying she did not approve of it. 

The charity initially said it stood by the comments – before later apologising and saying the post had fallen “below the standard we set ourselves".

The post sectioned out the UK prime minister, the levelling-up secretary, Michael Gove, and the environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, saying: “You said you wouldn’t weaken environmental protections. And yet that’s just what you are doing. You lie, and you lie, and you lie again.”

Environmental campaigners lashed out at the Sunak government after it confirmed that EU-era restrictions that force housebuilders to mitigate the impact of new developments on rivers will be scrapped.

Speight issued an apology and explanation this morning on BBC Radio 4. 

“There are lots of things happening at the moment and one of them is this proposal from the government to amend the habitat regulations, to disapply the requirements for nutrient neutrality.

“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.

“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.”

Ben Caldecott, one of the RSPB’s trustees, had criticised the group’s reaction. “We can strongly disagree and make our case without calling people ‘LIARS!’” he posted on X, saying he had raised the issue with the charity’s chief executive.

Clean rivers campaigner Feargal Sharkey has described the government’s scrapping of pollution rules as “a complete and utter shambles” and that “the environment has now been left to fend for itself.”