Census data indicating that there were 262,000 transgender people in England and Wales has been found unreliable and can no longer be considered an official statistic following a report from the UK’s statistics watchdog.
The Office for Statistics Regulation said in its report that the data should no longer be considered “accredited official statistics” after its investigation found that a significant number of people likely misunderstood the question.
The 2021 census asked respondents: “Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?”, which resulted in a response suggesting that 262,000 people, or 0.55% of the population, were trans.
“The question developed to determine the size of the trans population of England and Wales did not work as intended. The evidence indicates that people may have found the question confusing and therefore gave a response that did not reflect their gender identity,” the watchdog’s report reads, continuing, “This appears to be more likely for people who do not speak English as their first language”.
This is the first time census data has been downgraded in the UK since the establishment of Office for Statistics Regulation before the 2011 census.
The development comes after “concerns” were raised with the Office for National Statistics, as well as the regulator, about “the published estimates of the trans population,” concerns that “extended to the relationship between gender identity and proficiency in English” as more data were published.
Those concerns were raised after areas with large, migrant populations such as Brent and Newham in London, as well as Luton town, were found to have a disproportionately high number of trans people.
Campaigning and consultancy group, Fair Play for Women, said of the news that the ONS team in charge of designing the census “were captured by gender ideologues” and that basic questionnaire design principles were “abandoned in favour of ideological language and motives”.
“Rather than simply asking ‘are you transgender’ the gender activists wanted to embed the idea that *everyone* has a gender identity. Everyone was expected to declare whether their ‘gender identity’ matched sex. They failed. This isn’t a well established concept. It’s activist language,” the organisation wrote in a statement on X.
“Millions of pounds wasted, the opportunity to capture good data on the size of the trans community lost,” it added.
In its report, the statistics regulator acknowledged that the content and tone of the published communication from the ONS “has been somewhat closed and at times defensive” and that concerns were raised that the ONS had been “captured by interest groups, leading to a lack of objectivity”.
“We found no evidence of this form of bias through any of our work. We consider it regrettable that ONS’s defensiveness has created an impression of bias to some external observers,” the watchdog stated.
In its report, the statistics regulator requested that the gender identity estimates “no longer be accredited official statistics” but rather should be considered “official statistics in development”.
Director General of the OSR, Ed Humpherson said: “We welcome ONS’s request to us to remove the accreditation of these statistics.
“Our report sets out the reasons that the statistics do not comply in full with the Code of Practice for Statistics, together with the lessons that emerge for ONS, and OSR.”