Trans campaigner, physics teacher and trans woman Debbie Hayton has claimed fellow trans people "need to be honest" with themselves on the issue of biological sex, revealing she still identifies as "male".

Debbie Hayton appeared on the Mike Graham show to discuss the "brutal debate" on social media about the rights of transgender people, in particular on the topic of the Gender Recognition Act (GRA), which allows trans people with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria to change their legal gender on birth certificates.

A consultation is currently taking place on the GRA on how it can be made easier for trans people to achieve legal recognition in their chosen gender.

Ms Hayton told Mike Graham that making the process easier would open it up to "misuse".

"Effectively what the government is saying is we can change our legal sex just on our say so, no evidence needed at all. I suddenly decided I've changed my sex, you can then do that. And there's no way of objectively testing for these feelings," she said.

"Should we be basing the law on facts, or should we be basing the law on feelings? And that's my concern. With facts you can objectively test them, you can assess them.

"Anybody wants to make a process easier if they can, but by making a process easier or opening access to it, you risk the credibility in the process and you risk it being misused."

'We need to be honest with ourselves about who we are'

Ms Hayton added: "We need to be honest with ourselves about who we are, about our sex and how we wish to fit into society. My understanding of myself, and I speak only for myself here, is that I'm male, I'm still male, but I find it more comfortable to fit into society in the same way that a woman would fit in.

"The NHS can provide medical treatment and surgical treatment to help support that, but that doesn't actually change your sex and to believe that it does... there's a level of intellectual honesty that I can't abandon to come to that level of thinking."