I'm here.

Yes, I can.

I think we've covered the -- we've drawn out the main points. I think the press has shown an alarming lack of respect for trans people for many decades. It has shown an alarming lack of alacrity to try and learn about the issues. We noted Mr Mohan's ...

Yes.

Absolutely not, no.

Yes. Because of the position that trans people find themselves, the -- there's a lot of stigma. A lot of trans people lose jobs, find it difficult to get jobs. There is evidence that the earnings of a trans person is significantly lower than they could expect if they weren ...

By "entirely cheap", I'm hoping you mean free.

It's rather like the broadcast rules. If a broadcaster was to broadcast a programme which was then found in breach, they would then have to share the liability for that, irrespective of whether they produced the programme in the first place.

We heard on Monday that "a Daily Mail reporter" is usually a byline for a story received from a press agency. Yet our experience is when we challenge such stories, suddenly the paper denies any liability because they didn't source it themselves, and that causes massive problems in a ...

My own personal situation, I would like to broaden out the discussion from just simply the Gender Recognition Act, because as I said earlier there are a significant number of trans people who, for whatever reason, do not have a gender recognition certificate. Trans people are not able to apply ...

No, I'm not. The press will print these articles stating on the loosest possible claim that there is a public interest. I think very often they get confused with their belief that the public might be interested in an article. I can see no -- again, if we go back ...

It's all right. My understanding is the same.

I mean I haven't -- you have my copy of the Act there, Mr Jay.

Exactly. The explicit nature of it. Again because it appears that very often the press tends to look at the individual words, so because gender identity is not explicitly mentioned, it gets overlooked, even though it's implicitly.

(Nods head).

No. I think the point that we'd like to have put on record, as we have done, is made in the submission in terms of being able to be able to challenge the representation of the recently departed, because again of the standard conflations of trans with all sorts ...

The first one is really the point that Lord Leveson has just tried to draw out in terms of enabling vulnerable groups or representatives from those vulnerable groups to be able to make complaints on behalf of individuals. There are a number of articles though in the first part of ...

Well, I noticed that -- I mean, there's a number of things on the -- Mr Mohan was quite insistent that the Sun had mended its ways and no longer abused trans people, yet on 3 January there was an article in the printed Sun with the headline, "Tranosauras", about a ...

I don't know. The person who wrote this particular section was Jennie Kermode, so we can check with her to see what documentation she actually has.

I wasn't, no. That was a meeting up in Edinburgh.

I know. I think the issue -- people often appreciate the level of support that we can give, but they're reluctant to really push anything because they don't really see that there is any sanction to rectify the situation.

I think that would go quite a long way. The other aspect, I think, is the lack of real teeth from the PCC.

The PCC has, I think, wanted to express support, but for whatever reason is unable to actually deliver on that support.

In the meetings that we've had with the PCC, it's almost a bit like Pontius Pilate, washing their hands with a sense of woe that there's ...

(Nods head).

It is extremely unlikely, given that the average cost, as I alluded to before, for male-to-female genital reassignment is between 10 and 15,000, that for five people you could get those kind of surgical procedures for £7,440. Also, that is from April 2009 to the end of 2011 ...

The organisers of the group were then quoted in the local paper as saying that the Daily Mail's piece had ruined their lives and the local paper actually also received many expressions of support for the local group, which appears to entirely undermine the Daily Mail's stance.

Again I think I'd like to reference this in terms of the evidence Mr Dacre gave on Monday where he alluded to his organisation pursuing some kind of moral crusade and he felt it completely appropriate to expose people who were, in his terms, immoral. I struggle to see ...

Indeed. The idea that we would need an Olympic ambassador for transsexuals is itself mainly absurd. She has a role as an Olympic ambassador to meet a variety of different VIPs. The subject is misgendered again throughout the piece, beginning in the headline with "Sex change man". "Sex change" is ...

The first and most obvious point is why is "transgender people" in quotes? That headline seems to indicate that the Mail, in whatever guise, does not believe that trans people should exist.

There has been a series of calls for reviewing the existence of gender markers on UK passports, but ...

But it's still published by the same organisation.

It's definitely on Mail Online. We don't know whether it appeared in the print version of the day.

That appears part of it. I mean, the £78,000 seems to be made up of two figures, which is a £60,000 and an £18,000. The 60,000 is an oft-quoted figure for genital reassignment surgery. The figure is completely fictitious, as far as we can ascertain. The ...

It is making somebody an object rather than a person. It is dehumanising an individual. Trans people are not solely trans. They have other interests, they do other things. They go down to the supermarket and buy milk. They have different categories. And to constantly reduce trans people to one ...

May be male genitalia, yes.

Yes, that's correct.

The subject has talked to us since we made the submission and it has transpired that the ex-partner of the subject sold the story to a weekly magazine and they had published the story about the subject a few weeks earlier. The picture was sold to the magazine without the ...

Yes, it's juvenile. "Sex swap" also is a term which a lot of people find offensive. It seems to indicate some kind of immediate transference from one gender to the other. It's -- yes.

Yes.

There are -- it's really to do with the type of reporting. Trans people -- on the next page in the submission we detail a number of different ways in which the press routinely misgenders people, concentrates on the use of a former name, using before and after photographs to graphically ...

Most trans people now when they're the subject of an article which they would deem worthy of a complaint don't bother, because the PCC has received a number of complaints and it appears that nothing ever changes as a result of those complaints.

There was one example where ...

The honest answer is I don't know, but we have got examples of those things happening. There are cases where families have had to relocate. There are examples where families get -- trans people get death threats written and pushed on envelopes through doors. It is -- I don't know ...

A lot of transsexual people at the point they transition to what is known as their acquired sex or the sex that they believe themselves to be will have gone through a substantial period of heart searching. They will have -- they may well be suffering from aspects of depression and ...

Correct, yes.

I would actually expand on that and say actually most people do not choose to be transsexual. They try and choose not to be transsexual.

It's actually the Editors' Code of Practice Committee released a press release on 5 May 2005 where they specifically -- if I may quote:

"Individuals who are undergoing or have undergone treatment for gender reassignment will be included in the categories offered protection from prejudicial or pejorative references."

Further down ...

That is correct.

There are, yes.

Correct.

There is, that is correct. There are a large number of trans people who have transitioned who are -- who have chosen not to apply for gender recognition certificates for a variety of reasons. There are people who are unwilling to dissolve existing marriages. There are people who are suspicious about ...

Transgender -- I'll use trans if you don't mind, under the document it goes through transgender -- basically is the group of people who will identify with the gender opposite to the one recorded at their birth. So a trans woman will be someone who was recorded as male at ...