Abuse sent to MSPs triples in a year
20 June 2025, 12:24 | Updated: 20 June 2025, 12:33
Abusive social media posts directed at MSPs have almost tripled in the past year to more than 23,500, figures show.
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The shocking figure comes after the Scottish Parliament employed two members of staff - one a former police inspector - to trawl the social media accounts of the 69 MSPs who have signed up.
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 8,110.
The figures also come just a few months after Conservative MSP Annie Wells told LBC of the threats and abuse she had received online, including "one that said if I set foot in my own hometown of Springburn, I’d be “set alight”.
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 4,150, while the Conservatives were targeted in 1,888 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 3,996.
The Scottish Parliament's monitoring software searches social media for threatening and abusive language and can pass the posts on 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."
