M
Member
Speaking in the House of Lords on 27 January 2026
Debate
Crime and Policing BillContribution
The data is anything but consistent, as we know. Police forces differ from area to area, recording crime statistics variously—some by biological sex and others by concept, based on the ever-fluid and subjective ideas around gender identity. That has led to confusion and a conflation of sex and gender. The details of how police forces in England and Wales have recorded suspects’ sex in crime and reporting was revealed a few years ago by freedom of information access requests put forward by women’s rights campaigning organisations. They showed that many police forces record suspects’ gender identity rather than sex registered at birth, frequently on the basis of self-identification, and that has led to the muddle. Some forces even stated that they record the sex of a suspect who identifies as non-binary with the term “indeterminate” or “unspecified”. This is not accurate data collection.
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