Abusive social media posts targeting MSPs soar in one year to 23,500

The National

20-06-2025

An initiative by the Scottish Parliament has employed two members of staff – one a former police inspector – to trawl the social media accounts of 69 MSPs who signed up to the review.
The pair found 23,507 posts considered abusive in 2024-25, but which did not reach the required level to be considered criminal.
The previous year, the figure was 8110.
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In the most recent year, 257 posts were referred to Police Scotland – down from 461 the previous year – with one case proceeding to court.
The SNP – Holyrood's largest party and the party of Government – saw the highest level of abuse, with 15,749 posts directed towards its MSPs, but which were not deemed to reach the criminal threshold.
Scottish Labour MSPs were next with 4150, while the Scottish Tories were targeted in 1888 posts.
Scottish Green and Liberal Democrat MSPs faced 939 and 729 abusive posts respectively, while 52 messages targeted independent members.
Male MSPs received vastly more abuse than their female colleagues, with 19,511 messages compared to 3996.
The Scottish Parliament's monitoring software searches social media for threatening and abusive language and can refer the posts to police if required.
A briefing sent to MSPs by Holyrood's director of operations and digital, Lynsey Hamill, said: 'Whilst it is too early to draw any firm conclusions on trends and success of the scheme when comparing data from the pilot year and year one, we can see the scale of online abuse of MSPs is now readily apparent and growing.
'This chimes with feedback we have had from members for some time now.'
A Scottish Parliament spokesperson said: 'The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body (SPCB) is acutely aware of the rising level of threat against elected representatives.
'Last year, the SPCB invested £125,000 to make permanent its online threat managing service.
'Under the service, potentially criminal threats are identified by the Parliament's security team and escalated to Police Scotland for its action.'