A CONSERVATIVE MP has described how a teacher told pupils to shun his 13-year-old son because of who his father was.

Bob Stewart, the MP for Beckenham, south London, said the teacher’s action took the abuse suffered by MPs and their families to a “new level”.

His comments, came as MPs from across the political spectrum said they had been subjected to unprecedented levels of bullying and harassment in the course of this year’s general election.

ITV News reported that figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed the cost of protecting MPs has risen by £2.8 million in the 12 months since the murder of Jo Cox in July 2016 – an eighteenfold increase.

In other developments:

:: Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said she was called a “n***** bitch” and received death threats from trolls on Twitter;

:: Commons Speaker John Bercow hit out at reported remarks by former chancellor George Osborne suggesting he wanted Theresa May “chopped up” in his freezer;

:: A Labour MP called for the expulsion of party members who abused his eight-year-old daughter after he backed RAF airstrikes against Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

Labour MP Graham Jones described how his daughter was targeted by “people calling themselves Labour Party members” following the 2015 Commons vote on air strikes on IS.

Earlier, appearing on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Ms Abbott said the racist abuse she had received on Twitter had been “really quite frightening”.

Appearing before the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which is investigating the intimidation of parliamentary candidates, Conservative Party chairman Sir Patrick McLoughlin said he could not remember an election when there had been so much abuse.

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Labour Party chairman Ian Lavery said the abuse had been “like nobody has seen before” with the “lion’s share” aimed at women.