Labour wants online racist abusers banned from football matches

Anyone convicted of racist abuse online should be banned from attending football matches, Labour has suggested.

It wants the courts to be given new powers to crack down on perpetrators, like those who targeted members of the England squad after the Euros final.

Currently, only those who shout racist abuse from the terraces can be forbidden from attending games.

There has been condemnation of the abuse suffered by footballers Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho.

The trio were vilified online and a mural of Marcus Rashford was defaced following England’s defeat to Italy on Sunday.

It sparked a debate about whether the government and social media companies are doing enough to combat racism in the sport.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said the government was “introducing tough new laws” to force social media companies to clamp down on racism.

A spokesman said the Online Safety Bill, which is yet to be published, would prevent “repeat offenders” from opening new accounts and would include powers to make senior managers criminally liable.

A draft version, which came out earlier this year, suggests large fines would be imposed on technology companies if they failed to protect UK users from abuse.

“We will not hesitate to bring these powers into force if tech firms do not step up their efforts,” the DCMS spokeswoman said.

Labour’s shadow culture secretary Jo Stevens said urgent action was needed, but the government’s bill would not stop racist abuse online.

She said: “The racists who have been abusing England players online should be banned from football grounds.

“They do not deserve to be anywhere near a game of football.”

She said Labour would ensure online abuse was treated in the same way as racism directed at players from the terraces.

‘Utterly disgraceful’
England footballer Harry Maguire told the Sun that social media companies should crack down on the abuse by verifying all accounts.

“It is too easy to troll and abuse. To be racist is just too easy to be done and get away with,” he said.

“The amount of times we lose a football match with Manchester United and it happens – something needs to be changed.”

The prime minister met social media companies, including representatives from Facebook , Instagram , Snapchat and TikTok , on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the issue.

Ahead of the meeting, his spokesman said the companies should “do everything they can to identify these people [the perpetrators of racist abuse]”.

And earlier, Johnson told a meeting of his senior ministers the racism aimed at footballers was “utterly disgraceful and had emerged from the dark spaces of the internet”.

Facebook , which owns Instagram , said it had “quickly removed comments” directed at the players, while Twitter said it had used “a combination of machine learning based automation and human review” to remove 1,000 posts and block certain accounts.

BBC