Justin Webb has been wronged by the BBC

The BBC has upheld a ludicrous complaint against the Today programme’s Justin Webb. Back in August, Webb told listeners that trans women were ‘in other words, males’. This basic truth should not be controversial. We transwomen are male. It is a necessary criterion – women cannot be transwomen because women are female.

The background, incidentally, was a decision last summer by the International Chess Federation to ban those transwomen from competitions reserved for females. Webb was on the radio discussing the news item with Dominic Lawson. Webb’s point was timely and appropriate. Not everyone is up to date with the transgender debate and there is confusion – understandably – over specialist terminology. Indeed only a few weeks beforehand, it had been widely reported that more than a third of UK residents did not know that ‘transgender women’ were biologically male. Webb was simply carrying out his professional duty to explain and inform.