Census data suggesting there are 262,000 transgender people in the UK is unreliable and must be discarded, the statistics watchdog ruled today.
The Office for Statistics Regulations (OSR) said in a damning report that the figure would no longer be recognised as an ‘accredited official statistic’.
The 2021 Office for National Statistics (ONS) census – the first to count transgender people – asked the question: ‘Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?’
The watchdog said that, by wording the question this way rather than the simpler ‘Are you transgender?’, the survey had confused those whose first language is not English.
It found people with a foreign first language were four times more likely to say they were ‘trans’ than those who have English as their main language. Areas with big, religiously conservative migrant populations, such as Brent and Newham in London, were found to have higher numbers of trans people than Brighton.
Census data suggesting there are 262,000 transgender people in the UK is unreliable and must be discarded, the statistics watchdog ruled today
UK Statistics Authority oversees The Office for National Statistics (The ONS). The Office for Statistics Regulations (OSR) said that the ONS’s wording of the question, rather than the simpler ‘Are you transgender?’, had confused those whose first language is not English
The 262,000 figure from the census is still used by public bodies, including the NHS. And despite conceding its question was flawed, the ONS said it ‘cannot say with certainty’ if its estimate of the size of the trans population in Britain is ‘an overestimate or an underestimate’
Dr Michael Biggs, trustee of the charity Sex Matters, said: ‘I suspect the ONS’s close relationship with gay rights group Stonewall and deference to its “LGBTQ+ and Allies network” contributed to this question being developed without proper scrutiny.’
The 2021 Office for National Statistics ( ONS ) census – the first to count transgender people – asked the question: ‘Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?’
Yet the 262,000 figure from the survey is still used by public bodies, including the NHS.
And despite conceding its question was flawed, the ONS said it ‘cannot say with certainty’ if its estimate of the size of the trans population in Britain is ‘an overestimate or an underestimate’.
It found the trans population made up 0.3 per cent of people who describe their ethnicity as ‘White: English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British’. But the trans proportion was 1.6 per cent among those described as ‘Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African’.
The ONS must now re-label its published gender identity data to warn of its ‘limitations’. Dr Biggs said: ‘It’s disgraceful the ONS took 18 months to admit this.’
A letter sent to the watchdog by the ONS said it requested ‘gender identity estimates from 2021 are no longer accredited official statistics and are classified as official statistics in development’.
Ed Humpherson, OSR director general, said: ‘We welcome ONS’s request to us to remove the accreditation of these statistics.’