Campaign Group Urges Statistics Watchdog to Investigate ‘Not Fit for Purpose’ Gender-Identity Data

There are major concerns that census data may have drastically overestimated the number of trans people in England and Wales.

File photo of a sign for unisex non-binary gender neutral toilet. Victoria Jones/PA Wire

The campaign group Sex Matters is urging the statistics regulator to investigate what it calls “not fit for purpose” skewed data on the transgender population.

In a letter addressed directly to the head of the Office for Statistical Regulation (OSR) on Sunday, the gender-critical group Sex Matters requested an investigation into the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) gender identity data.

In the letter, Sex Matters told OSR boss Ed Humpherson, that it believed that this was driven by the “adoption of concepts and questions promoted by lobby groups that seek to replace sex with gender identity.”

The OSR provides “independent regulation of all official statistics produced in the UK.”

There have been ongoing major concerns that concerns results may be skewed owing to misinterpretations of the question of gender identity.

Gender Identity Census

In 2021, the ONS, for the first time, included a question on gender identity in its census questionnaire for England and Wales.

People aged 16 or over were asked whether or not the gender they identified with was the same as their sex registered at birth. If a respondent answered “no,” he or she was then invited to write down their gender identity in the boxes below.

According to the ONS, of the 45.7 million people in the age group, some 45.4 million (93.5 percent) answered “yes” and 262,000 (0.5 percent) answered “no” to the question.

Some 48,000 people said they were trans men, the same number identified as trans women, 30,000 wrote non-binary, and 18,000 gave other answers.

And 118,000 people—45 percent of those who answered no—left the boxes blank.

This, and further breakdown of the data, raised concerns over accuracy.

In January, commenting on the possible reasons, Alice Sullivan, professor of sociology at University College London and head of research at the UCL Social Research Institute, wrote in The Spectator that either some trans-identified people provided false information on their sex, or some people, such as foreign language speakers, were confused by the gender identity question and ticked the wrong box.

‘We Cannot Say With Certainty’

In November, the ONS released a final summary of its investigation into the quality of gender identity census data

It said that there are some patterns in the data that “are consistent with, but do not conclusively demonstrate, some respondents not interpreting the question as intended; given other sources of uncertainty, not least the impact of question non-response, we cannot say with certainty whether the census estimates are more likely to be an overestimate or an underestimate of the total number of trans people aged over 16 years in England and Wales.”

Sex Matters, however, said that data on gender identity (including the sex of the people identified as transgender) is “not fit for purpose.” It added that the ONS investigation was “inadequate and its conclusions are not supported.”

In a statement to The Epoch Times by email, Maya Forstater, Sex Matters executive director, said that despite “warnings from many that its questions and guidance on sex and gender identity were confusing, and the categories were muddled, the ONS bullishly went ahead with them in the census.”

“This was a costly mistake. The resulting data on gender identity are worse-than-useless, as they give the impression of certainty and detail on which decisions can be made.

“The ONS has dug in and refused to admit that this data is unreliable, so we are calling on the national statistics regulator to properly investigate and determine whether they meet the grade for national statistics.

“Parliament, through the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, should open an inquiry into what went wrong and to hold the ONS accountable,” she added.

A spokeswoman for OSR confirmed to The Epoch Times that OSR boss Ed Humpherson received the letter from Sex Matters. She pointed out that it is currently doing a lot of work on a number of topics regarding data about sex and gender identity.

She added that it is also currently reviewing and updating its guidance on collecting and reporting data about sex, which is due to be published later in 2023.

The Epoch Times spoke to ONS who said they couldn’t comment as this was a matter between Sex Matters and OSR.

Lily Zhou contributed to this report.