'Social media needs to take more responsibility' following Southport stabbings misinformation

A cabinet minister said Merseyside Police faced a difficult battle to counter misinformation about the Southport stabbings and called on social media companies to take more responsibility. Labour's policing minister Dame Diana Johnson told the ECHO that the government faces a huge job when it comes to how quickly misinformation can spread in the wake of serious incidents such as the tragic mass stabbing that resulted in the deaths of three young girls in July this year.

Following the stabbing, false information about the ethnicity and religion of the alleged attacker was quickly spread on social media leading to significant rioting both on Merseyside and around the UK. The ECHO previously reported how the terrorism watchdog claimed that an "information vacuum" about the attack contributed to an increase in false stories and speculation.

Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer terrorism legislation, said in the event of mass casualty attacks more information should be made public by public institutions such as the government, police and media. When asked if the local police force should have been more forthcoming with information to help counter misinformation, the policing minister told the ECHO: "For the police it's quite challenging because if you have a live investigation and you have criminal proceedings you want to be very careful.

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"The prime minister has talked about the most important thing being delivering justice for the victims and if information is put out that could jeopardise the trial then justice can't be achieved. Police have to work within the guidelines that are set, but it is difficult and it doesn't help when some politicians stir things up on social media for their own ends."

Speaking to the ECHO at Birkenhead's The Hive during a visit to see the work of the Onside Youth Charity, Dame Diana added that misinformation is a cross-government issue that Sir Keir Starmer's party recognises the importance of addressing. She added: "I know the secretary of state has responsibility for social media and is meeting with tech companies to work out what more can be done.

"We have the Online Safety Act which took time to get through parliament, parts of that are enforced, others are not. There is a huge job around this and I don't think anyone underestimates how powerful social media is and how misinformation can spread so quickly and cause a lot of what was being said by people which was clearly wrong. This is ongoing about how we get the tech companies to take more responsibility."

Ahead of the Labour Party conference, held in Liverpool this week, the ECHO's editor Maria Breslin urged the government to back trusted and responsible local media and ensure tech giants prioritise boots on the ground expertise over peddlers of misinformation. She wrote that the consequences if not materialise like they did during the riots where "extreme forces exploited the horrors" of the stabbings.

Speaking earlier this month at a conference organised by the think tank Counter Extremism Group about how the rioting happened, terrorism watchdog Mr Hall said people "undoubtedly fed upon the information vacuum by circulating false stories and they appear to have incited and enraged and inspired people to those really bad attacks by the absence of information in circumstances where people were dying".

As first reported by the Times he added: "One of the problems and the consequences of the Southport attack was that there was an information gap, a vacuum, which was filled with false speculation. I personally think that more information could have been put out safely without compromising potential criminal proceedings."

Speaking to the ECHO about the mass stabbing that resulted in the deaths young girls - Bebe King, Alice Da Silva and Elsie Dot Stancombe -and serious injuries of several others, Dame Diana said: "My thoughts and prayers are with the families and the community. It was devastating for them. I want to pay tribute to the police and the emergency services that had to respond to that appalling incident. Our thanks go out to those brave men and women.

"I know as policing minister that they are risking their lives each day, but I'm also very conscious that within a few days they were having to face certain people throwing bricks at them and the abuse they had to put up with. That is absolutely something we won't put up with. The prime minister was very clear that there were consequences for people's actions.

"People said it was in the name of what had happened in Southport, it was clearly to do with criminality. It had nothing to do with what happened to those three little girls. People have to accept if they engage in criminality there will be consequences. What we do want to do is remember and support communities.

"I know the community that came out in the day after the riots in Southport are the decent, law-abiding people that most of this country is made up of. Not the thugs and hooligans fighting the police and causing fear in communities."

Dame Diana was on Merseyside to outline the government's ambitious plans to half the country's growing knife crime in the next decade. You can read more about that here.