Official estimate of 262,000 trans people in England and Wales formally downgraded in embarrassing setback for ONS
13 September 2024, 14:49
Official figures claiming there are 262,000 transgender people in England and Wales have been stripped of their accredited status, after fears the census question may have been misunderstood.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
On Thursday, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) requested a reclassification of its 2021 gender identity data from “official statistics” to “official statistics in development”.
It is the first time this has happened to census data since the Office for Statistics Regulation was formed before the 2011 census. The census is the questionnaire on British society produced every ten years.
The ONS admitted there was “potential for bias” in answers to the question: “Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?”
A data release from the ONS showed that 2.2 per cent of those who spoke English “not well” or “not well at all” were counted as transgender.
This compared to 0.4 per cent of those whose main language was English or Welsh, making those who speak English poorly five times more likely to say they were transgender.
The ONS admitted there may have been potential bias in answers from those “who responded that they did not speak English well”.
Concern about the figures emerged when the census appeared to show that the east London borough of Tower Hamlets had the highest proportion of trans people.
Dr Michael Biggs, an Oxford professor who first raised concerns about the question, said the ONS had made a “long-overdue admission” that the question was “fundamentally flawed”.
He said: “It’s disgraceful that the Office for National Statistics took 18 months to admit this. Of the total of over 100 questions in the 2011 and 2021 censuses, this is the first to have been downgraded by the ONS.”
The 2021 census was the first to explore the issue of gender identity and of 262,000 people who indicated they were trans, 118,000 did not provide further detail.
Some 48,000, or 0.1 per cent of the population aged 16 and over, identified as a trans man, and the same number identified as a trans woman.
A total of 30,000 identified as non-binary, while a further 18,000 people wrote down a different gender identity.
Dr Biggs revealed that the ONS question was very similar to one proposed by transgender campaign group Press For Change in 2007.
The Office for Statistics Regulation, which examined claims over the 2021 census question, said there was no evidence that the ONS had been “captured by interest groups”.
But in a review published yesterday, it added: “We consider it regrettable that ONS’s defensiveness has created an impression of bias to some external observers.”
Biggs said he believed that ONS’s close relationship with LGBT lobby group Stonewall contributed to this question being developed without proper scrutiny and said it was “essential” that other public bodies were stopped from using it.
The ONS said: “Our request to reclassify better reflects the findings coming from the first census question of its kind and our developing understanding of measuring this complex and important topic.
“We will publish further explanation of the uncertainty associated with the estimates this year, particularly around smaller group breakdowns, along with advice for users, and will work across government and beyond to develop harmonised standards and guidance for collection of data on this topic.”
