THE Swindon-based National Bullying Helpline has rightly praised Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s efforts to raise awareness of cyber-abuse.

The minister has written to social media providers demanding they do more to deal with the scourge, and reduce the number of under-age users.

Something the helpline would like to see is a new criminal law dealing with ecrime.

It’s hard not to sympathise with that idea. It’s even harder to find so much as a shred of sympathy for certain social media organisations.

For them, social responsibility takes a back seat to vacuuming up details of everything from our voting intentions to our inside leg measurements, and then flogging them to the highest bidder.

When their bosses are hauled, blinking, before some committee or other to account for their activities, they always seem to have a seedy pallor that puts us in mind of a recently-unbandaged injury, or possibly the underside of a slug.

Still, I can’t help thinking there’s an easier solution to cyber-bullying than another raft of legislation.

Call it a bit of a revolutionary notion, but we could actually enforce the laws we already have, and do it properly.

For example, the last time I looked, it was illegal to threaten people. Should I take it into my head to wander around, approach people and threaten to kill or hurt them then and there, or else come round to their house later and do it, I’d be committing a serious criminal offence.

Several of them, in fact.

I would be committing more or less the same offence were I to do something similar over the phone, or by writing threats on a postcard or hiring a light aircraft to display my threats on a long banner trailed overhead.

Similarly, were I some festering neo-Nazi with a pet weasel called Adolf and a fondness for dressing up in an SS uniform, it would no more be legal for me to spout threatening, abusive filth online than it would be for me to do so in the town centre on the busiest shopping day of the year.

For that matter, if I developed an obsession with an ex-partner - or a complete stranger for that matter - and bombarded them with unwanted online messages which left them distressed, I would be in breach of laws against harassment, just as I would be were I to follow them about in person with a wilted bouquet in my hand, a delusion in my heart and a crazed look in my eye.

Were I to fall into any of those categories of criminal - stalker, harasser, racial abuser, maker of violent threats - and had so much as an ounce of brainpower, I’d probably prefer to operate online instead of in person.

I’d realise that, as things stand, I’d probably get away with my activities for a lot longer, and that even though I might cause just as much distress and fear as I would if I committed my crimes in person, tracking me down would be a lot more difficult for the authorities. )Indeed, unless I made the mistake of harassing and abusing a celebrity or some other VIP, it might be months or years before scarce resources were devoted to tracking me down.

Even if I ended up in court, I could simply have my lawyer claim my threats and harassment were harmless banter, that my victim was overreacting and that I deserved no more serious punishment than a few stern words of advice.

If I did not believe those things, if I knew the law would be rigidly enforced and that I was staring down the barrel of a formidable punishment, who knows?

Perhaps I’d be less inclined to abuse people.