A BRIGHTON MP has apologised for comments he made about an author in an article he wrote about transgender rights.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle apologised "unreservedly" on Twitter this morning for accusing author JK Rowling of using her past history as a justification for discriminating against the transgender community.

In an article he wrote for Tribune Magazine, the Labour MP for Kemptown had said JK Rowling had used her own experiences as ”justification for discriminating against a group of people who were not responsible for it."

He wrote: "Trans people are no more likely to be rapists; in fact, they are more likely to be victims of sexual assault themselves.”

Mr Russell-Moyle also described the Harry Potter author's comments as part of a system of "deliberate divide and rule tactics" against transgender people.

But this morning, Mr Russell-Moyle wrote on Twitter: "I want to apologise unreservedly about the comments in the article that I wrote last week in Tribune regarding Trans rights in which I mention J.K. Rowling."

He said J.K. Rowling's first disclosures in her recent article on Trans issues “were heartfelt and must have been hard to say”.

Mr Russell-Moyle added: "Whilst I may disagree with some of her analysis on trans rights, it was wrong of me to suggest that she used her own dreadful experience in anything other than good faith.

"I have asked Tribune to remove the line in question."

JK Rowling had made the decision to publicise her experiences after her tweets about a headline in an online article discussing “people who menstruate” had sparked anger on social media.

Ms Rowling had tweeted: "I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

The 54-year-old has voiced concerns about proposed changes which would give biological men self-identifying as women access to single-sex spaces.

Ms Rowling responded to criticism surrounding her comments, in which she had been branded a "trans exclusionary radical feminist", or "TERF", in a lengthy blog post on her website.

She wrote: “I’m mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces."

The author added that the world is living through "the most misogynistic period" she has ever experienced.

She said: “From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the p***y’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble.

“Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.”