The number of crimes against MPs has more than doubled in a year, prompting concern about the level of intimidation and abuse politicians are facing.

A specialist police team set up to investigate crimes against MPs dealt with 242 complaints last year, compared with 102 in its first year of operation. The unit launched in August 2016 after the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox.

The data, obtained through freedom of information from the Metropolitan police’s parliamentary liaison and investigations team (Plait), was not broken down by the nature of the crimes.

The Met attributed the rise to better engagement with the unit and more MPs reporting problems. DI Philip Grindell, who leads Plait, said: “Since we formed … we’ve engaged with all MPs about the work we do and encouraged them to report incidents of concern to us.”

But experts also expressed concern about this being a growing problem, and MPs spoke of their staff reporting a handful of threatening letters a week to the police.

The shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, said: “These are batched at the end of the week, otherwise contact with the police would be too frequent. There are many more than this, but these are the ones where police action may result.”

The Labour MP said her staff spent considerable time removing and blocking abusive or threatening posts or comments from social media. “Facebook and Twitter have proven not to be at all helpful in doing this themselves. Overwhelmingly the abuse is of a highly offensive racist and misogynist character,” she said.

Abbott noted that the constant flow of abuse increased sharply when there was a major crime involving a black or Asian suspect or perpetrator. She added that negative press coverage had an impact, saying it was hard to escape the conclusion that some parts of the press played a role in “encouraging abuse, unwittingly or otherwise”.

Sofia Collignon an assistant professor at the University of London who studied abuse against politicians during elections, found that 32% of the candidates experienced harassment and intimidation in 2017.

“We did not ask this question in 2015 but we have reasons to suspect the issue has worsened … because 45% of the candidates that answered a follow-up survey consider that the issue got worse in 2017 compared with previous elections. Additionally, there is a decrease in the number of candidates that support the publication of their home address,” Collignon said.



She said the rise was a result of more awareness of the issue and an increase in MPs’ use of social media as a means of communicating with the public.

“More than 74% of the candidates who suffered abuse [based on the survey results] did so on social media, with limited actions taken to foster an environment of respect and tolerance in the platform. My results also suggest there is less tolerance to ideological differences,” she said.

MPs from all parties have talked about receiving death threats and abuse on social media. Theresa May has promised to tackle threatening behaviour.

A report published this month by the thinktank WebRoots Democracy looked at ways to turn the tide against the “sewer of hate speech and abusive content” found online.

One of the suggestions was for online antisocial behaviour orders, whereby people who persistently abuse politicians would be banned from Twitter or Facebook for a short period and added to an online abuser register.