The number of transgender people in England and Wales was ‘incorrectly recorded’ in the latest census, officials admitted for the first time yesterday.
Bosses at the Office for National Statistics said data suggesting there were 262,000 trans individuals ‘should not be used’ as an exact reflection of the population.
It comes after a watchdog last year downgraded the ONS figures and said they would no longer be recognised as ‘accredited official statistics’.
The 2021 census – the first to count trans people – asked: ‘Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?’ The Office for Statistics Regulation found that people whose first language was not English were four times more likely to say they were trans than English speakers.
The watchdog added the ONS had been ‘closed and at times defensive’ following criticism of its data and had been focused on ‘defending’ its estimates.
Yesterday the ONS admitted that some people were ‘incorrectly recorded as trans’ in the 2021 census. But due to the ‘limitations with the data’, it was unable to ‘draw conclusions about the scale or effect of this’.
Despite this the ONS said it had ‘high confidence’ that the 2021 data could still be used to provide a ‘broad indication’ of the overall size of the trans population.
But it said more detailed estimates of trans populations ‘should not be used’ and added: ‘The census 2021 gender identity estimates should not be used to provide estimates of the sizes of the population who identified as each of trans man, trans woman, non-binary, and all other gender identities.’
The number of transgender people in England and Wales was ‘incorrectly recorded’ in the latest census, officials admitted
Pictured: Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns at human-rights charity Sex Matters
Bosses at ONS said data suggesting there were 262,000 trans individuals ‘should not be used’ as an exact reflection of the population
It comes after a government-commissioned review last week found that the conflation of sex and gender has become ‘widespread’ in official data over the past decade.
The Sullivan Review found that a ‘partisan climate’ exists within public bodies, including the ONS, and called for the Government to carry out a ‘review of activism and impartiality’ in those bodies.
Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns at human-rights charity Sex Matters, said: ‘Four years on and the ONS is still having to dedicate time and resources to untangle the mess generated by the confusing gender question in the 2021 census.
‘The ONS repeatedly ignored expert input given in good faith that would have avoided this shameful and costly debacle and instead took advice from ideologically driven activist groups.’
