Crime Statistics: Gender Identity

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Roborough

Wednesday 24th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to issue guidance on data to be collected throughout the criminal justice system by sex, as registered at birth, not gender identity, to ensure consistency of crime statistics across England and Wales.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

Home Office guidance states that police forces should record an individual’s sex in the legal sense that is based on their birth certificate or gender recognition certificate. Separately, an individual’s gender identity can be collected. The Government have commissioned an independent review into the recording of data on biological sex and gender identity by public bodies and in research. The review is due to report in August and will inform our future approach to recording.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I am glad to hear from the Minister, who I know is sincere on this, that the Government are taking this seriously, because accurate statistics are vital for evidence-based criminal justice policy. First, can I press the Minister to agree that, at present, official crime data is not accurate, credible or consistent? FoI requests to countrywide police forces reveal that they use a wide variety of differing recording practices; commonly record self-declared gender identity instead of birth sex, which is not the same as on your birth certificate; and that suspected and even convicted male rapists are recorded as female if they say that they are women.

Secondly, does such dubious data undermine public trust in the believability of crime figures, and hinder voters in informed debates about criminal justice? This is especially important in the lead-up to the elections for local police and crime commissioners.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, in answer to these concerns, the Government have recently commissioned Professor Alice Sullivan to conduct an independent review of data collection on biological sex and gender in research and statistics within public bodies. This will report back by August 2024. The Home Office will thoroughly review Professor Sullivan’s findings when they are available, and will take any necessary action to ensure accuracy with regard to police statistics.

The Home Office annual data requirement for police custody, ADR 149, which is a mandatory collection, requires police forces to record the sex of detainees. In providing data to compile the Home Office’s homicide index, police forces are required to record a suspect’s sex—male, female or not known. The suspect’s gender is recorded separately, and only if it is different from their sex.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Roborough

Report stage
Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, Amendment 93 simply but crucially calls on the Secretary of State to

“issue guidance for relevant bodies”,

such as the police and police and crime commissioners,

“in respect of data collection to ensure that sex registered at birth is recorded for both victims and perpetrators”.

Just to note, the heading in the amendment is rather misleading when it says:

“Collection of data on victims of crime”.


Actually, the main confusion lies with the perpetrators, which obviously has an impact on the victims.

For the policies and proposals in the Bill to be effective, which we all want, many of them will rely on evidence. That means criminological research and official crime data, such as recorded crime and victim surveys, which will enable stakeholders, policymakers and researchers to analyse patterns in both victimisation and offending, and will allow interventions and services to be developed and resources to be targeted effectively.

As I pointed out in Committee, criminal justice data needs to be accurate, credible and consistent. However, data on a person’s sex is now not accurate, credible or consistent because agencies in the criminal justice system do not distinguish between sex, gender identity or self-declared sex. I will not repeat the detailed evidence collected by freedom of information requests that I cited in Committee, but police forces increasingly differ from area to area, recording crime statistics variously, some by biological sex but others by some other concept based on ever-fluid and subjective ideas about gender identity, which is often recorded as if it were sex.

The guidance I ask for in this amendment would clarify that gender should not be used as a synonym for sex, as it leads to confusion and conflation. In turn, this conflation of sex and gender compromises official statistics in terms of trustworthiness, quality, and value for policy and for public understanding. The guidance should untangle the vast array of muddled recording practices around government records, such as passports, driving licences, NHS numbers, et cetera, all of which can be changed, but no amount of documentation changing affects the need for a consistently applied legal identity that is fixed and unchanging from birth to death, registered with the state and necessary for the state to fulfil its responsibilities to citizens—no more so than in criminal justice. That is why data based on sex registered at birth is so important, as it is a fundamental demographic variable, reflecting the reality of sex-based differences between men and women.

Those compiling the guidance might look at other identifiers. For example, in the debate on my Amendment 18 on the previous day on Report, I discussed the problems of identity confusion in relation to safeguarding checks. Keep Prisons Single Sex has made an interesting recommendation relating to the mandatory use of national insurance numbers for DBS checks in relation to identity changes. National insurance numbers remain constant throughout an individual’s life. They are unique to each individual. They do not change and they are unchangeable—even, for example, when an individual obtains legal recognition of acquired gender. So even if someone is issued a GRC, the individual’s new details are listed against their existing national insurance number, which is unchanged and retained until 50 years after the individual’s death. It seems that the state does understand the importance of accurately recording and knowing who a citizen is, and their natal sex, when it comes to collecting taxes. Such seriousness is necessary in other policy areas.

We can see the dangers of confusion if we look at what the Cass review has to say about data in relation to NHS numbers; I am grateful to Sex Matters for its briefing on this issue. NHS numbers are the unique national patient identifier in the UK’s health and social care system, and are vital for clinical safety, record management and, of course, clinical research. However, it has been policy for some time that GP surgeries can change a patient’s recorded sex on their medical records at any time, without requiring diagnosis or any form of gender reassignment treatment, and request a new NHS number. Public Health England tells GPs that medical information on the person’s record must be gender neutralised and transferred to a newly created medical record.

The Cass review found that many children seen by GIDS had changed NHS numbers before they had been seen by specialists, and some were “living in stealth”—that is attending school in the opposite sex. The Cass review draws attention to the dangers this poses, which is helpfully analogous to the problems I am raising and that we face in the lack of clarity on crime data. Dr Cass raises

“concerns about children and young people’s NHS numbers being changed inconsistently, as there is no specific guidance for GPs”.

The review highlighted changing NHS numbers putting children and young people “at risk”—for example,

“young people attending hospital after self-harm not being identifiable as … on a child protection order”,

And, from a research perspective, creating difficulties in identifying

“long-term outcomes for a patient population for whom the evidence base is weak”.

In criminal justice, inconsistent data collection, due to the conflation between sex and gender, can similarly compromise safeguarding and especially distort research—as a consequence, potentially distorting the way the public access facts in relation to crime. Take the differing offending patterns between males and females. Males commit the large majority of offences per se, and some offence categories are only or very rarely committed by females, such as sexual offences or violent crime in particular. That means that even if only a small number of natal males who identify as females are recorded as women, this skews the female sex-offending statistics in a misleading way.

This amendment proposes that the Government use guidance to bring clarity to the situation. This is of democratic importance and seems an important part of the Bill, which means more accountability to and about victims and accountability to the public about the victims and perpetrators of crime. The truth is that the practices of criminal justice agencies recording self-declared sex as actual sex were introduced by public authorities without proper democratic debate, behind the backs of the public, depriving the public of clarity about what is measured in crime data. That then seeps over into misleading the public about precisely who commits crime when it arrives in the public sphere, via the media, for example.

I warmly welcome the manifesto for police and crime commissioners published by campaign groups Fair Cop and Keep Prisons Single Sex, and one section seems especially pertinent to finish with. It says that police and crime commissioners’

“Press releases and communication with the public must be written in accurate and accessible language. Suspects, and other persons of interest, must be described in a way that the public can clearly and quickly understand. Sex registered at birth is always information that must be shared with the public”


and not concealed. Beyond this official crime agency language and media reporting, police-collected data must not be allowed to erase measurable facts and objective reality.

I hope that this amendment will receive support across the House as a modest contribution to clearing up these confusions. I am hoping the Overton window has shifted of late, by the way. How welcome it was to hear Labour shadow Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood acknowledge that she agrees with JK Rowling that

“biological sex is real and is immutable”.

As well, I welcome her comments on the dangers of justice by hashtag and free speech. This amendment simply seeks to ensure that criminal justice data also recognises the immutable nature of sex. I hope the Labour Party will back me in relation to this. I am grateful as well to the Government and the Minister, who has organised for officials to discuss these issues with Kate Coleman from KPSS before Third Reading. It is in everyone’s interest that crime data is accurate, credible and consistent. At present, it is not. I beg to move.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for her Amendment 93, which requires guidance to be issued on data collection of sex registered at birth for victims and perpetrators of crime. I recognise the noble Baroness’s commitment to this topic, and I believe the House will return to the subject tomorrow. Many of the points I will make were made last week while discussing the noble Baroness’s other amendment that sought to require data to be collected. I therefore apologise for any repetition.

The Government recognise that accurate data and statistics on biological sex are important to good research and effective policy. For this reason, the Home Office issued guidance in April 2021 in the annual data requirement that sex should be recorded in its legal sense, what is on either an individual’s birth certificate or their gender recognition certificate. Gender identity should also be recorded separately if that differs from that. For consistency, this is based on classifications used in the 2021 census for England and Wales.

Since implementing this guidance, the Government have commissioned an independent review of the recording of sex by public bodies, which will report at the end of August 2024. The Home Office will consider this new guidance once it is available in deciding whether changes are needed to the recording of the sex of victims and perpetrators dealt with by the police.

However, we recognise that there are concerns in this area, and the department has committed to meet groups such as Keep Prisons Single Sex to hear their concerns. Legislation is not required for guidance to be issued on this area. We will continue to work with stakeholders and await the outcome of the review for whether further guidance is needed in this area. I respectfully ask that the noble Baroness withdraws her amendment.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, when I was at school, there used to be a tactic called sending people to Coventry, in which you were ignored as a sign of contempt. I am disappointed a second time that the Opposition Benches do not think it worth engaging on the issue, regardless of whether they want to engage with the individual who is putting forward the issue. I am very glad to hear the Minister’s words that the Government are taking this seriously. I genuinely hope that Opposition parties will take this seriously as well, because there is a problem. We heard the noble Lord, Lord Bach, talk earlier about the importance of accurate and consistent data and simplifying data. He made a good point, and I backed him up on it. I was rather hoping that this side of the House—the Labour Benches—might see that through and at least make some positive comments in relation to my amendment.

I will, of course, withdraw the amendment, but I do not withdraw the importance of the issue. I hope that the detail that will be brought by somebody who has got a detailed knowledge of this—Kate Coleman—to the meeting will help any guidance that might emerge in August and also ensure that we no longer carry on showing the public confused data and hoping that they can work their way through it. It is a democratic question, and I hope that, in future, democrats will take it more seriously than perhaps we have seen tonight. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Roborough

Report stage
Tuesday 16th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 17 and 18. It is interesting listening to the discussion that we have had this evening, because many people that I speak to, particularly women, assume that the consultation on the victims’ code or discussions on enhancing victims’ rights will mean better support for female victims, particularly in relation to service provision. All that Amendment 17 seeks to do is to clarify what I am sure is the intention of the Bill, which is to be supportive of, for example, single-sex provision for women and the appropriate service provision that can be given, and to ensure that we know what we are talking about.

It might appear that getting a commitment that police and crime commissioners, integrated care boards and local authorities will all work together to commission support services for, for example, victims of domestic abuse or sexual abuse, ensuring that they can access the services that they need, and lots of discussion about services by women and for women, would be clear enough. However, as I explained in Committee and in a much-appreciated and helpful meeting with the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, and officials— I back up what others have said about how it was refreshing to have a Minister, or someone from the team, who is prepared to talk to us quite openly—having heard from the charity Sex Matters, all is not as it seems. I fear that, if the Government do not address this by sorting out the language and clarifying matters, their aspiration to enhance female victims’ rights will suffer because of confusion over the law and over the definition of sex.

“By women and for women” might seem a straightforward proposition until we ask, “What is a woman?” In 2024, that has become a contentious question. Over recent years, we have lost clarity over what we mean by the categories “men” and “women”, and that can undermine women’s services. This has happened due to the insistence from some quarters—often very powerful quarters—that women’s services must be trans inclusive by including men who identify as women in what should be women-only provision.

For example, the terms of references for Avon and Somerset Police women’s independent advisory group—to use just one example—state: “In this group we use ‘women’ as a term that is inclusive of the legally protected characteristic of female sex and gender identity as well as gender expression and those who are perceived and treated as women and those who identify as women”. This is such an expansive, non-material, confusing definition of women.

The amendment is simply trying to ensure that, where the victims’ code talks about services for women or makes any assumption that there will be services for women victims, we use the clear category of “sex as registered at birth”, rather than that ever-expansive term in which women—as in biological natal women—are merely a subcategory of this newly expanded definition of women.

Sometimes we are told that, unless trans women are treated as women, it would be in breach of Schedule 3 to the Equality Act. The Government need to clarify the law in this regard because, in fact and in law, a service can be female-only as a matter of policy. Apart from anything else, the Equality Act requires public authorities to have due regard to meeting the specific needs of women.

Another misunderstood factor is that even when a person has acquired a different gender under the Gender Recognition Act, that does not affect the status of the person as a man or a woman in relation to the Equality Act. Indeed, it would be helpful if the Government could give clear guidance to people applying for GRCs that this change in documentation does not give them the right to access services or spaces set aside for the opposite sex. Such clear guidance would also be helpful for service providers and commissioners, and in relation to how people read the victims’ code.

I want to illustrate the negative impact of these kinds of confusions on women victims seeking help by citing a worrying but brilliant piece of investigative journalism. Children of Transitioners has collated evidence that there is no women-only service provision in Bristol. This mirrors exactly the situation in Brighton that I described in some detail in Committee. I have detailed examples from Bristol, but I appreciate that the House will not bear with me so I will not go through them. Needless to say, if you are a woman who has been raped or sexually assaulted or suffers domestic abuse and reports it to police officers in Bristol, they will suggest to these distraught women—these victims—where they can get further support. They may well be sent to “by women and for women” provision, which those police officers feel are safe spaces. It is just that when you actually look at the provision in Bristol, you will find consistently that women-only services are also accessible to and welcome trans women. Trans women are men who identify as women and should be provided with services as appropriate, but not in women-only services. So this provision is not actually women only; it is mixed sex.

I was struck by the fact that, when the integrated care board of Bristol lists a range of “by women and for women” organisations, an example it gives is Womankind. Noble Lords would think that, with a title like that, the clue would be in the name. Womankind calls itself a service for women and girls. Online, it displays lovely suffragette colours. What is not to like? Actually, in correspondence with Womankind, another story emerges. Womankind says that it is for women and for

“those who identify as such in a significant way, including those who experience discrimination as … for instance, trans women … and non-binary”.

Womankind confirmed, after the investigation was done, that there is not one abuse support service in Bristol for natal women victims alone. Its advice for those unhappy with the situation was to “try London”, which seems extraordinary.

I use these examples because I know from replies from the Dispatch Box and at the meeting that there is very much a feeling that this is not a problem that the Government have detected when meeting service providers and commissioners. It is important to dig beneath the language of saying, “There is provision available; what’s the problem?”. It depends on who you ask. Bristol Women’s Voice—an organisation that claims to represent women’s voices to the council and to the police—does not see a problem, so in that sense if the Government were talking to that organisation they would think that there is no problem. But Bristol Women’s Voice does not think there is a problem because it also has a policy of trans-plus inclusion in relation to its definition of what a woman is.

It would also be naive not to look at the evidence about layers of public bodies and local authorities being lobbied and influenced by ideologically driven NGOs such as Stonewall, which has been much in the news of late. Ministers also tell us that it is up to service providers to choose the most appropriate services. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, heard from the evidence from Helen Joyce and Maya Forstater in the Sex Matters report, Women’s Services: a Sector Silenced, that many of those who provide women-only services often self-censor to placate funders and to avoid being investigated, ostracised, disciplined or maligned as bigots, all of which are career-threatening.

In case you think this is all hyperbole and question what I am talking about, there is a very similar pattern here to those whistleblowing medics at the Tavistock Clinic whose stories of malpractice have now so vividly been exposed in the Cass review as true. They were maligned for raising them. It is to the credit of Victoria Atkins that her excellent Statement in the other place drew this out. Credit is also due to Wes Streeting from the Opposition, who also accepted that the Cass review was an important step forward. Kemi Badenoch made the point:

“Had those who warned that gender services in the NHS had been hijacked by ideologues been listened to instead of gagged, children would not have been harmed and the Cass review would not have been required”.


So, although I am making a fuss, I want to say to the Government that maybe they should listen to the warnings from whistleblowers in the women’s services sector who are explaining that we are denying women victims single-sex provision, causing great harm and trauma for vulnerable women who might self-exclude and might well not even seek support if services to which they are referred may include men identifying as women.

I will say something very quickly about Amendment 18, because I discussed it fully in Committee. This is an attempt to use the victims’ code to tackle a loophole whereby, if incarcerated or registered sex offenders change their gender, even just by a self-declaration, they are afforded enhanced privacy protection that allows their new identity to disappear from view in terms of criminal justice and normal safeguarding procedures and before criminal justice bodies. Through the sensitivity applications route, a sex offender who changes their gender identity can conceal their past identity and sex for the purpose of, for example, disclosure and barring services—DBS—checking processes. This means that a sex offender’s past name and identity are not displayed on any DBS certificates; they can have their self-declared gender identity instead.

In Committee, I explained that the reason I knew about this loophole was due to the story of Clive Bundy. He was imprisoned for 15 years in 2016 for sexually abusing his own daughter, Ceri-Lee Galvin, throughout her childhood, but was released half way through his sentence. Clive Bundy changed his gender before his early release and became a self-identifying woman, named Claire Fox. This is what drew my attention to this particular case.

This amendment tackles the anomaly that, due to Bundy’s enhanced privacy rights in relation to his gender change, Ceri-Lee, his victim and his daughter, had no right to know that he had been released as a woman called Claire. After his release, Clive Bundy, also known as Claire Fox, went to live in the same town as his daughter and her daughter. As Claire Fox, he could apply for jobs or to be a volunteer locally and work with children, including potentially his own granddaughter and no one would know. Any DBS check would not show up red flags and the family would not be forewarned. Amendment 18 wants the Government to look at whether they can do something about this loophole.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for tabling Amendment 17, which seeks to ensure that victims are able to access support from someone of the same sex, as registered at birth, and that women-only support service provision is confined to those registered as women at birth. I also want to thank the noble Baroness and Maya Forstater and Helen Joyce from Sex Matters for their time in discussing these matters with me yesterday, ahead of this debate.

From the outset, let me be clear that this Government recognise the importance of a victim feeling confident that they can ask for particular things, such as someone of a particular sex to make them feel comfortable and help them best engage with support. We also recognise that single-sex services can and should be provided in some circumstances. That is why we have written to providers who receive funding from our rape and sexual abuse support fund to make clear our expectation that they should take reasonable steps to provide spaces which exclude service users who are not biologically female or male, where that has been requested by a victim and where it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, in line with the Equality Act 2010.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Roborough

Committee stage
Monday 5th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

I am afraid that the response to my noble friend is that the Government are absolutely adamant that service providers are the right people to make these decisions. They deal with a number of different concerns from victims and have to balance those against the resources available to their organisations.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I know that noble Lords want to move on, but the key to what I was saying is that service provision has been compromised by political and ideological interventions. If anything, this undermines the very exemptions in the Equality Act. I am afraid that saying “It’s up to them”, when they are the problem, potentially, is not quite going to cut it.

Could the Minister at least take back to the department that we will be returning to this issue on Report? It is very important, and we need some clarification. Maybe it can come after the meeting with the Sex Matters report writers, but saying that the status quo prevails does not work in this instance.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

I am very happy to take the noble Baroness’s comments back to the Minister and the Government, and to discuss them.