Ben Bradley: Twitter abuse ‘putting off future MPs'

Analysis found 13% of tweets mentioning Ben Bradley were abusive, with more than 2% classed as severe

An MP found to have received the highest proportion of abusive tweets in a BBC survey, said fear of insults and violence put people off public service.

The BBC analysed almost three million tweets where MPs were mentioned over a 12-week period earlier this year.

About 5%, were classed as toxic - being rude or unreasonable - with Mansfield MP Ben Bradley seeing the highest proportion of 13.5%.

Mr Bradley said threats and personal abuse marred an important job.

Ben Bradley said the murder of MP Jo Cox showed online threats could not be discounted

The BBC Shared Data Unit found that overall former Prime Minister Boris Johnson received the most abusive tweets - almost 19,000, or 3.5%, of the total received.

But when adjusted for proportionality, Mr Bradley received the most negative tweets, with 2.1% classed as "severe".

He was mentioned in hundreds of toxic-rated tweets after arguing for the privatisation of Channel 4.

The MP, who is also the leader of Nottinghamshire County Council, admitted there were a number of worrying aspects.

"It is frustrating because I can usually overlook people who are just sweary and angry because it doesn't mean a lot," he said.

"The ones I find the most upsetting are where people have made a real strong judgement about your character and what you are like having never met you, based on some Twitter things they have read that are often wrong."

Kidnap threat

He added: "The worst bit is I often have people say to me 'I wouldn't want to do your job because of all that stuff'.

"But being a Member of Parliament is a huge privilege and should be something that people want to do and aspire to."

And he emphasised the abuse had real world impacts, which once included threats to kidnap his family.

"I don't think we are going to get out of this social environment where people are mean to each other from the privacy of their keyboard," he said.

"But where it does cross the line and what's really, really important is where we have colleagues - David Amess, Jo Cox - who have been killed off the back of that sort of hateful conversation.

"It can grow and grow and we need to make sure people are kept safe."

The BBC's Shared Data Unit used Perspective, a tool that uses artificial intelligence to spot toxic comments online.

Developed by Jigsaw, a research unit within Google, it defines a toxic comment as one which is "rude, disrespectful or unreasonable" and "likely to make someone leave a conversation".

Analysis also showed all 20 of the MPs receiving the highest proportion of toxic comments were not members of the cabinet or shadow cabinet.

Twitter was unavailable for comment but has previously said it was committed to combatting abuse as outlined in its Hateful Conduct Policy.