Scotland’s only Labour MP has claimed his scrutiny of the Scottish government’s handling of coronavirus has prompted a huge surge in online abuse.

Ian Murray, Labour’s Shadow Scotland Secretary, spoke out after a photoshopped picture of him in front of a “No Surrender” Loyalist flag was shared hundreds of times on social media last weekend.

Speaking to the Daily Record, the Edinburgh South MP said it was his duty as a member of the opposition to hold the Scottish government to account.

“Why do we have one of the highest death rates in the world?”

"I can see why Nicola Sturgeon performs better as a communicator when the bar that has been set is Boris Johnson,” Murray said.

"But there are key questions that need to be asked in Scotland. What I'm trying to do is ask legitimate questions.

"If people think everything is going wonderfully in Scotland, why do we have one of the highest death rates in the world, why was our care home death rate 50 per cent higher than in England, and why are we testing only three to four thousand a day?

"These are key things the Scottish Government need to be held to account on. Health statistics show they are doing - comparatively in international terms - pretty poorly."

But when the 43-year-old raises these points in public, he says he receives a barrage of abuse.

"This happens regularly. People on Facebook are putting out false stories and false pictures to try and cause a bit of hassle. It's not necessarily deliberate but it is very prevalent.

“It’s out of control”

"I've received hundreds of emails and Facebook social media messages in the last week for daring to criticise or question the Scottish Government. It's out of control.”

Murray, who was the only Labour MP to keep his seat in Scotland at the last General Election, said the online targeting had increased.

"It's intensified in recent months but in recent weeks it's got even worse. Every time you put your head above the parapet, they are all there to shoot you down.

He said that fake news was more prevalent too, claiming: “The kind of disinformation that gets put out is incredible."

He said he had not suffered this level of vitriol since the 2014 Independence Referendum, when he was a prominent member of the Better Together campaign.

"If the baseline of the referendum was 100, I think after it dropped quite considerably," he added.

"Every party and every argument has had this problem”

"Then with Brexit, the drive for an IndyRef2, and me being the only Labour MP left in Scotland, it's just ramped up to 2014 levels. We are crossing that baseline already.

"This is on all sides but I'm only giving you my experience. And my experience is that the pro-independence movement is very loud and very abusive on social media - not all of it, of course.

"Every party and every argument has had this problem. But this is my experience of what I'm seeing at the moment."

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “As we have repeatedly made clear, figures contrasting Scottish and UK testing rates are not directly comparable.

“Every life lost to the virus is a tragedy, including those in our care homes, where the mortality rate is in line with that in many other countries.

“We are doing everything possible to protect lives, and the number of excess deaths in care homes from all causes – including Covid-19 – has been lower in Scotland than in other parts of the UK."

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Ian Murray MP says online trolling as bad as during independence referendum

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