First count of UK’s trans population

MPS yesterday cleared the way for the first official count of the number of transgender people in the country.

The next national census will include a question in which people can say whether they consider their gender to be the same as when their birth was registered.

Managers at the Office for National Statistics hope the pioneering question will go some way to solve continuing arguments over transgender numbers. Theresa May’s Government planned to bring in laws that would allow people freely to choose their own sex on the basis of a report by MPs which said there are 650,000 trans people in the UK.

That would make the trans population bigger than the number of citizens of Manchester or Sheffield. The figure was widely doubted by critics of the transgender lobby. MPs yesterday passed a bill on third reading paving the way for a £700million census in 2021.

Officials plan a voluntary question which will allow those who say they are trans to declare their changed gender. A compulsory question will ask for their sex at birth. The ONS has published guidance on how it plans to pose the question on gender identity for the first time. The question will be: ‘Is your gender the same as the sex you were registered at birth?’.

The ONS stressed this will be voluntary and only asked to people aged 16 and over.