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The Times- Equality and Human Rights Commission had ‘heavy-handed’ influence on gender questions

Equality and Human Rights Commission had ‘heavy-handed’ influence on gender questions

In 2022 for the first time respondents can self-identify their sex instead of declaring what is on their birth certificate.
In 2022 for the first time respondents can self-identify their sex instead of declaring what is on their birth certificate.
BULAT SILVIA/GETTY IMAGES
Jeremy Watson
The Times

A human rights body has been accused of “heavy-handed” influence on guidance that will allow transgender people to self-identify in the collection of data by public bodies from next year.

The “What is your sex?” question in forms will for the first time tell respondents that they can self-identify their sex instead of declaring what is on their birth certificate.

Policy analysts claim a document trail shows that the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), a statutory UK body, put “extreme external pressure” on civil servants in Scotland to alter their initial proposals during a consultation period.

Roger Halliday, the Scottish government’s chief statistician, who produces guidance for public bodies, had suggested a main question based on biological sex at birth with an added section to allow people of lived gender, non-binary lived gender, trans status and non-binary trans status to self-identify.

Analysts Murray Blackburn Mackenzie (MBM) said documents released through freedom of information legislation reveal the EHRC trying to influence the guidance.

A letter from EHRC officials last year to Halliday said: “The commission has serious concerns about the guidance in its current form. The promotion of gathering data relating to biological sex is not something that we can support and we would not be able to endorse it.” The final guidelines, issued in September, say: “If you are transgender the answer you give can be different from what is on your birth certificate.”

A report by MBM said EHRC Scotland seemed to have a role in influencing the guidance in its formative stages, with staff appearing “to tie the chief statistician’s hands by refusing to support any version that was seen to promote the collection of data on biological sex”. It said this was an extraordinarily heavy-handed wielding of the commission’s authority.

“While the final published guidance did not fully preclude collecting data on sex registered at birth, nor did it promote it . . . clearly taking its lead from the EHRC intervention,” the report said. The definition in the guidance was “radically” changed in the final weeks of a two-year process, it added.

Kath Murray, an Edinburgh University academic who is part of the MBM collective, said: “If this guidance stands, it will mark the point at which Scotland officially became a nation unable to say what most of the data collected by its public sector marked as ‘sex’ is actually recording.” Alice Sullivan, professor of sociology at University College London, added: “The fact that EHRC Scotland has dissuaded Scotland’s chief statistician from supporting data collection on sex is extraordinary.”

A spokesman for EHRC said it supported the collection of accurate data on both sex and gender “as this will help the Scottish government and other organisations to make good decisions about their services and to comply with equality law. Asking questions about legal sex, sex registered at birth, gender identity and trans status are all lawful as long as the questions are proportionate and appropriate for data collection purposes and do not discriminate against or breach the human rights of respondents.”

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