Judge orders census question on sex and gender to be rewritten

GUIDANCE on how to answer the sex question on the UK census must be changed, the High Court has ruled, despite three million people having already completed the survey.

The Office of National Statistics this year issued guidance to help those who identify as transgender or gender fluid answer the question: “What is your sex?” The question, which has remained unchanged for more than 200 years, was accompanied by the advice: “If you are considering how to answer, use the sex recorded on one of your legal documents such as a birth certificate, Gender Recognition Certificate, or passport.”

Campaigners argued the guidance allowed “self-identification through the

back door” as the sex on a passport or other legal documents could be altered without a formal legal process.

Yesterday Mr Justice Swift ruled in favour of the campaigners, ordering the guidance be rewritten to remove the words “such as” and “passport”.

The case was referred for a full judicial review, which could be heard as early as next week.

Jason Coppel QC, representing the campaigners, told the High Court the guidance “conflates and confuses” sex with gender identity, which could have a “distorting” effect on census data.

Fair Play For Women, which crowdfunded £100,000 to bring the legal challenge, wanted the wording withdrawn immediately. But the court heard three million people – a fifth of households – had already completed the census.

Nicola Williams, of Fair Play for Women, said: “This [ruling] is a warning to the all public authorities that you can’t just decide for yourselves what sex is. Sex has a meaning, it’s important and it has a meaning to women and girls.

“If we can’t define it, then it undermines women’s rights. This is a line in the sand to say that sex means sex, it’s not the same as gender identity.”