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Legal Matters
Scotland
Pilot highlights abusive social media posts sent to MSPs

Social media posts sent to MSPs are often so abusive and threatening that they are passed to Police Scotland. A pilot programme established by the Scottish Parliament in the aftermath of the murder of the MP Sir David Amess, which involved 38 of the 129 parliamentarians at Holyrood, identified 461 potentially criminal comments over ten months. On average, each MSP who took part in the trial received 12 abusive posts which were reported to police in less than a year. Although there were no direct threats during the trial period, abuse usually centred around protected characteristics such as gender, sexual orientation and race. In total, 8,000 comments were deemed to be abusive, with 461 of them determined to rise above the criminal threshold. The vast majority - 6,621 - were directed towards members of the SNP, while 592 were directed at Scottish Tory MSPs, 501 towards the Scottish Greens, 282 for Labour and 114 for the Lib Dems.

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