A group which defends supporters of  Jeremy Corbyn who have been expelled or suspended on charges of antisemitism has deleted its Twitter account, saying it condemned tweets which were sent in its name after a lawyer withdrew support from the group.

Labour Against the Witchhunt said it “deplores some of the tweets that have been issued in our name” but did not say what they were.

Barrister Michael Mansfield withdrew his sponsorship of the LAW group after being "alerted to material being promulgated by the campaign".

Mr Mansfield is believed to have ended his association with LAWH after he was shown inflammatory social media posts by people connected the group that used the term "Zio" and called Jewish Labour MPs "racist scum".

A statement by the group's steering committee claimed that its Twitter account had “been used outside of our control.

“We have only just been informed of the content of some of the tweets and wish to distance LAW from them in the strongest possible terms...

“The person responsible for the tweets has offered his resignation, which the steering committee has accepted.”

Earlier, Mr Mansfield had said: "I joined the campaign LAW in order to defend the right of those who wished to voice legitimate criticisms of the government of Israel and their repeated violation of International law from being unfairly categorised as antisemitism...

"Recently I have been alerted to the material being promulgated by the campaign.

"I was unaware of this and both the tenor and content are unacceptable. For these reasons I wish to withdraw my sponsorship of the Campaign, whilst at the same time wishing to maintain my enduring support for a responsible and vigorous critique of any government which flagrantly undermines the rule of law."

LAW said it had deleted the offending Twitter account and set up a new one.