A Twitter user is planning to complain to the Home Secretary after police investigated him for retweeting a poem which suggested transgender women are still men.

Harry Miller is furious at his ‘Orwellian’ treatment by an officer who rang to check his ‘thinking’ after he had ‘liked’ a limerick which includes the lines: ‘You’re a man. Your breasts are made of silicone... And we can tell the difference... Your hormones are synthetic.’

In all, the company director – a former policeman – had posted about 30 tweets on transgender issues when he was called by a police officer, who introduced himself as ‘representing the LGBTQ community’ after receiving a complaint.

Harry Miller (pictured) is furious at his ‘Orwellian’ treatment by an officer who rang to check his ‘thinking’ after he had ‘liked’ a limerick

According to Mr Miller, 53, of Nettleton in Lincolnshire, the complainant was an unknown member of the public who had found him via his plant management company and decided ‘if I employed trans people at all, it was not a safe space for them’.

The officer, PC Mansoor Gul of Humberside Police, told Mr Miller that he had 30 tweets by him.

When asked if any contained ‘criminal material’, the policeman read the poem, prompting Mr Miller to say afterwards with some disbelief: ‘A cop read me a limerick over the phone.’

Mr Miller said: ‘I said, I didn’t write that. He said, “Ah, but you liked it and promoted it.” I asked why he was wasting his time on a non crime.

‘He said, “It’s not a crime, but it will be recorded as a hate incident.” ’

He added: ‘The cop told me that he needed to speak with me because, even though I’d committed no crime whatsoever, he needed (and I quote) “to check my thinking!” Seriously. Honestly.

‘Finally, he lectured me. Said, “Sometimes, a woman’s brain grows a man’s body in the womb and that is what transgender is”.’

Father-of-four Mr Miller told The Mail on Sunday: ‘1984 is supposed to be a book, not a police operat- ing manual.’

He added: ‘To be told that the police needed to check my thinking was a bit much.’

Mr Miller insists that he has ‘nothing against transgender people’ but is concerned about the damaging potential impact for the safety of women from proposals to allow any man who chooses to identify as female.

He plans to write to the Chief Constable of Humberside, the Home Secretary and the Police Commissioner for Humberside to complain and ask the force ‘to sort out its borders as to what constitutes police work’.

Mr Gul told The Daily Telegraph: ‘Although none of the tweets were criminal, I said to Mr Miller that the limerick is the kind of thing that upsets the transgender community. I warned him that if it escalates, we will take further action.’

A Humberside police spokesman said all reports of hate incidents are taken seriously and the force would always ‘take appropriate action’.