Contribution
My Lords, I am grateful for all the contributions to this, as usual, heated debate about recording data. I will focus mainly on data in my response from these Benches.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, for starting by quoting some data sources, but neither she nor the amendment acknowledges the existing police guidance about capturing demographic data and annual data requirement 153, all the work already being done by the National Police Chiefs’ Council to review these policies following the April 2025 Supreme Court judgment, and its desire to develop a national standard for recording protected characteristics. In November last year, an equality impact assessment for the Law Enforcement Data Service noted:
“There is no legal obligation on any person with a GRC to inform the police that they have changed their name or gender”.
It is vital that data collection by public bodies has a clearly defined purpose and scope, and that staff have the right training and guidance to deliver services that support and accommodate all service users.
In addition, the Home Office produces the annual data requirement, which sets out requests and requirements for data that police forces should collect and report to the Home Office. Some are mandatory, some are voluntary. Requirement 153, which I referred to earlier, is voluntary and details how forces should capture demographic data
“in a consistent way by aligning it to ONS census 2021”.
This sets out that data about sex
“should be recorded in line with information on … birth certificate or gender recognition certificate”.
At the moment, it is not clear how widely this has been adopted.
Since 1974, the police national computer has been the main database of criminal records and is used by front-line officers from all police forces in the UK to understand who they are interacting with. In 2016, the Home Office established the national law enforcement data programme to replace the PNC and PND with the Law Enforcement Data Service or LEDS—sorry, another acronym. That will replace the existing PNC capability across all police forces this coming March.
The equality impact assessment for LEDS was published in November 2025 and considered how the programme would impact on those with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. The EIA states:
“There is no legal obligation on any person with a GRC to inform the police that they have changed their name or gender. Where a person does wish this to be acknowledged then LEDS user can add an Information Marker”.
The EIA notes that the NPCC is undertaking a policy review following the April 2025 Supreme Court judgment, which
“aims to strike a balance that is both lawful and respectful of all individuals involved”—
that is a quote from the judgment—and that
“LEDS is being built to configure new policies as they take effect”.
The EIA also notes that a working group on national protected characteristics data recording standards was established by the Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Coordination Committee and the NPCC diversity, equality and inclusion lead. It is important to note, as has been mentioned by others, that the Supreme Court judgment in the case of For Women Scotland v the Scottish Ministers considered the definition of “woman” only for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010.
In addition to that, I have found an FoI dated May 2025 and the ONS response on a question about the collection of data. It gives a somewhat detailed response to about 10 different questions on how many people who have undertaken gender reassignment have been convicted of certain offences or groups of offences. Under the category of collection of data for gender identity, which is different from the sex registered at birth category, it says:
“We have to be robust enough to provide reliable estimates”.
It cannot provide reliable estimates. Why? Because the numbers are so low. As I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, knows, as she has been quoting data quite a bit, if you cannot rely on the data because it is low compared with the millions of women across the country, it becomes a problem to be able to include it. Why? Because the data will not show, or, if it is pulled out separately, individuals will become identifiable to the public. That is the fundamental problem.
So, I hope the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment. The National Police Chiefs’ Council is already undertaking work to review policies in light of the Supreme Court judgment. The Supreme Court judgment was limited in considering the meaning of “sex” for the purposes of the Equality Act, not for wider legislation or policy. Frankly, it is unclear how this amendment would be practically workable; front-line police forces would be asked to challenge information provided about an individual’s sex. It is also unclear how the amendment would be consistent with data protection legislation, the Gender Recognition Act, and, indeed, Article 8 rights to a private life.