BASILDON and Billericay MP John Baron is one of just a handful of members of the House of Commons not troubled by a survey issued today (Wednesday, 9 November) about abusive messages on Twitter – he doesn't have an account!

A new survey produced by the BBC's shared data unit shows the level of 'toxic' abuse the 599 members of the House of Commons who do have one get via Twitter.

The service analysed almost three million Tweets mentioning MPs over a six-week period to find out just how many could be classed as abuse. 

More than 130,000 of the 2.9 million monitored Tweets were deemed to be 'toxic', which is defined as a rude, disrespectful or unreasonable comment that is likely to make someone want to leave a conversation.

There are some shocking numbers in the survey, which will be of interest to Mr Baron's neighbouring MP Stephen Metcalfe, who is featured though he is one of the least abused MPs.

East Thurrock and South Basildon MP Mr Metcalfe received just three toxic Tweets in a total of 144 mentions. 

He was mentioned in 1455 Tweets and just 29 (2%) of them are regarded as toxic. Only one was classified as 'severely' toxic.

Mr Metcalfe's Conservative colleague, Thurrock MP Jackie Doyle-Price is prominent though.

Ms Doyle-Price received 66 Tweets that were rated 'toxic' in the survey, out of a total of 1,513 Tweets she was mentioned in. Of those six were classed as 'severely toxic'. 

In percentage terms that made her the 59th most abused MP in the list of MPs who have  active Twitter accounts. 

The most abused MP in terms of percentage was Mansfield's Ben Bradley with 13.5 per cent of 4,827 Tweets being toxic. He has caused numerous social media storms over his outspoken views over a number of years.

He has been branded an 'evil misogynist' among comments, many in response to his views on free school meals, describing the National Trust as 'woke', speaking out on educational attainment for white working class boys and calls for a 'Minister for Men'.

The person who received the most toxic Tweets was former Prime Minster Boris Johnson, with 18,907 out of more than half a million messages and it appears abuse goes hand-in-hand with the job. Current PM Rishi Sunak got 9,258 toxic Tweets. Former Prime Minister Liz Truss got 5,642 toxic messages.

Being in opposition doesn't mean you don't get abuse, Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer got 8,109 toxic Tweets out of just more than 200,000 messages.