South West Norfolk MP and former prime minister Liz Truss among MPs to receive most toxic messages on Twitter

South West Norfolk MP and former prime minister Liz Truss is among the top five MPs in the country to have received the most tweets deemed as toxic, according to new data.

Ms Truss's Twitter account was on the receiving end of the fourth-highest number of 'severely toxic' tweets, with Nadine Dorries, new prime minister Rishi Sunak and former PM Boris Johnson taking the top three positions.

It comes after analysis from the BBC's Shared Data Unit of three million tweets mentioning MPs within a six-week period revealed that Ms Truss got 1,252 tweets that were deemed as 'severely toxic'.

Findings from the report also showed that female MPs are more likely to receive abuse compared to their male counterparts.

In the BBC's analysis, a tweet is classified as toxic if it was a "rude, disrespectful or unreasonable comment that is likely to make someone leave a conversation". The tweets were also measured on the use of swear words and phrases.

MPs from the Conservative Party received higher levels of toxic tweets than any other party.

The data was taken in a six week period between March and April this year, before Ms Truss became PM but while she was still foreign secretary.

Out of the 111,382 tweets mentioning Ms Truss, 5,642 of them were deemed as 'toxic' and 1,252 were 'severely toxic'.

Some of the words tweeters used in messages mentioning Ms Truss's account included "thick", "ignorant", "stupid" and "pathetic".

Four out of five people tweeting did not have their account suspended for using hateful language.

Jess Phillips, Labour MP for Yardley, shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, said she had noticed people spoke about Ms Truss in a different way than they had about former male prime ministers.

"Since Liz Truss became the Prime Minister, I have noticed a huge amount of the critique has been about her being ‘thick’ in a way that I didn’t see with Boris Johnson," she said.

"The idea that women are thick and stupid and not fit for public life is still in the minds of people who would abuse members of Parliament.

"It is a small group of people, I’m pleased to say.

"I think there is still very much this idea that a politician is a white man in a suit and anyone who breaches that will be considered stupid, or a mess, or their clothes aren’t right. That is just code for being a woman."

Data also revealed that North West Norfolk MP James Wild received a total of seven toxic tweets during the six-week period.

Only one of those tweets to Mr Wild were deemed as 'severely toxic'.