Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government why the Department for Education maintains named individuals' religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability information from Higher Education equality monitoring data, rather than retaining the information as anonymised statistics.

Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)

The department does not directly collect information from higher education institutions concerning the religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability of students. However, the department does receive these variables from Jisc (and previously the Higher Education Statistics Authority) as part of the student records that they share with the department.

The information is held at a named level to enable this data to effectively function as a longitudinal research source, which can be used to compare educational pathways with other (non-educational) outcomes later in life. This will provide an evidence base against which society can evaluate and monitor the impact of education and training on outcomes and support government decision-making to improve services and ensure equality of opportunity for all irrespective of background or circumstances.

While individual identifiers are retained by the department for matching purposes, at all times the department will minimise the processing of, and access to, instant or meaningful identifiers. Access to named data within the department is restricted to a small number of data professionals with responsibility for matching this data with other sources and creating pseudonymised, or aggregated, versions of the data which are subsequently used for research and statistics.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what is the total number of individual named (1) current, and (2) former, students' records held by the Department for Education collected in equality monitoring, broken down by (a) religious affiliation, (b) sexual orientation, (c) gender identity, and (d) disability.

Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA – now part of Jisc), is responsible for collecting and publishing data on the UK’s higher education (HE) sector. The latest published statistics refer to the 2021/22 academic year.

The department holds individual-level HESA data for all HE students in each academic year from 1995/96 to 2021/22. From 1998/99, the students are able to be identified by name.

The HESA data includes information on student’s disability status, religion or belief, gender identity and sexual orientation, although, gender identity, sexual orientation and religion or belief (for English, Scottish and Welsh HE providers) were not collected prior to 2012/13. Note that gender identity differs to biological sex which has been collected across all academic years since 1995/96.

The estimated figures below are derived by counting every student that started a HE course in the UK since 1999/2000, as well as the total number of enrolments (entrants and continuing students) in the academic year 1998/99. The figures exclude students with a missing first and last name, but includes students who are not part of the standard registration population. Therefore, these figures will differ from HESA’s publications. Additionally, students that disclose sensitive characteristics for the first time in any year after their first year of study are not counted under the estimated number of students with known sensitive characteristics, and students that have started more than one course since 1998/99 are counted once for each enrolment.

The department is estimated to hold the names of 28,927,337 students that started a HE course in the UK between 1998/99 and 2021/22. For 27,424,867 of these names, the department holds information on at least one of the following sensitive characteristics - disability status, religion or belief, gender identity or sexual orientation.

Of the estimated 28,927,337 names held by the department, 27,373,886 (95%) of them have a known disability status, 7,403,109 (26%) have a known religion or belief, 6,164,770 (21%) have a known gender identity and 6,388,972 (22%) have a known sexual orientation.

Student numbers broken down by personal characteristics over time are available through HESA’s open data pages, which can be found here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/sb265/figure-5. HESA’s publication archive for earlier years can be found here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/publications.

While individual identifiers are retained by the department for matching purposes, at all times the department will minimise the processing of, and access to, instant or meaningful identifiers. Access to named data within the department is restricted to a small number of data professionals with responsibility for matching this data with other sources and creating pseudonymised, or aggregated, versions of the data which are subsequently used for research and statistics.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the letter from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to all members of the House of Lords on 8 August, what other forms of care will be included within the clinical study around the use of puberty blockers for young people experiencing gender dysphoria or gender incongruence.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

Young people experiencing gender dysphoria or gender incongruence will be provided with care within a different clinical model, embedding multi-disciplinary teams in specialist children’s hospitals. Individuals within these National Health Service specialist gender services will be offered multidisciplinary assessment, within the context of a tailored package of care and support that responds to their individual health and social care needs. A study into the potential benefits and harms of puberty suppressing hormones as one of the treatment options for children and young people with gender incongruence is being developed through a joint programme between NHS England and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the research arm of the Department.

It is planned that recruitment into the study will be through these NHS specialist gender services, ensuring that individuals accessing hormone suppression through the study do so following a holistic multidisciplinary assessment within the services above. The study team has submitted their research application, and this is currently undergoing scientific review. Subject to the study achieving the necessary approvals, including ethics approval, the NIHR will publish details of the award, including trial design and methodology, on its website. The study forms part of a wider joint programme of research and evaluation underpinning the delivery of new services for children and young people with gender incongruence. Further research will be needed to continue to build the evidence base and our understanding of best practice in this important clinical area, including for psychosocial interventions. Work will continue with a broad range of stakeholders to inform further study priorities.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many young people are on the waiting list to access support at the specialist gender services at Great Ormond Street Hospital and Alder Hey Children's Hospital; and what is the current average length of time spent by young people on the waiting list before attending their first appointment.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

As of July 2024, there were 6,033 individuals on the national waiting list for NHS Children and Young Peoples Gender Services, which includes the services in London and the North West, with a median waiting time of 95 weeks.

NHS England has published an ambitious two-year action plan, which sets out how it will continue to transform and improve services. Investment in children and young people’s gender services in 2024/25 has more than doubled compared to 2023/24, and will increase further as new services are established.

In April 2024, NHS England opened two new services in the North West and London that offer a fundamentally different clinical model, embedding multi-disciplinary teams in specialist children’s hospitals. A third new service will open in the South West in the autumn, and a fourth in the East of England in spring of next year. NHS England is advancing towards meeting its commitment for there to be a specialist children’s gender service in every region by 2026. These new services will increase service capacity and reduce waiting lists.

We understand that it must be challenging for all those on the waiting list for services, but it is important that we get these services right, which involves developing teams with specialist clinical skill sets and ensuring that research is embedded within services. NHS England has also written to all children and young people on the waiting list for services, to offer them a mental health assessment, and has rolled out an improved referral pathway into services, which ensures that children are assessed more holistically through referral via pediatrics or children’s mental health services.

In his House of Commons written statement HCWS70 on 4 September 2024, my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care outlined the significant progress that has been made in the transformation of children and young people’s gender services.