You’re all signed up for Legal Matters Scotland
Thank you for your interest in our service.
Watch out for a confirmation email from our subscriptions team. Once you have confirmed you will join the community of thousands of subscribers who are receiving daily Legal intelligence to lead, innovate and grow.
Note: Due to the nature of this message you may find this in your "promotions" or "spam" folders, please check there. If nothing arrives within a few minutes let us know. If you do not receive this email we will be happy to help get you set up.
Adding the email address [email protected], will help to ensure all newsletters arrive directly to your inbox.
Recent Editions
Legal Matters
Scotland
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.
Full Issue