The Duke of Cambridge has accused the world’s technology giants of failing to protect children from the hate and bile of social media, as he warns they are out of their depth in tackling the negative side of their platforms.

The Duke, who has spent months working with web companies to try to tackle cyberbullying, condemned the “defensive” attitude of social media firms in refusing to accept their role in the spread of hate speech, fake news and the torment of young people in their own homes.

In an unprecedented intervention, the Duke, a father of three, said the firms were failing to take seriously the real fears of parents whose children faced “supercharged” bullying online, in a situation already “leaving some children to take their own lives when they felt it was inescapable”.

The speech, his most significant and strongly-worded to date, was made at the BBC as part of an update on his Cyberbullying Taskforce. It follows months of frustration for the Duke who has been attempting to convene technology companies and platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Youtube, Apple and Google.

The Duke said he had sought to gather them together to tackle the pressing issues facing the internet after realising fellow parents were "making up the rules as we went along” when it came to online safety.