Mick Hartley

Surrey's new Police and Crime Commissioner Lisa Townsend, we heard the other day, is keen to move away from Stonewall and its gender identity crusade. In brave new Scotland, on the other hand, they do things differently:

On 30 April 2021 Police Scotland launched its latest ‘Your Police 2021-2022’ online survey, aimed at understanding the ‘views and priorities of Scotland’s diverse communities’. First launched in 2019, the survey seeks to engage with different communities across Scotland and is communicated via corporate social media and targeted communications, relying on people’s willingness to take part. In 2020-2021, the survey secured over 36,000 responses.

To capture data on the views of different groups of respondents, the survey asks a series of demographic questions, including age-group, ethnicity, sexual orientation, health, and religion. The survey also asks about the respondent’s gender identity (Male; Female; Non-binary (gender neutral); Other (please specify); Prefer not to say), and separately, whether the respondent considers themselves trans or has a trans history. The survey does not however, ask for the respondent’s sex.

In response to a query from a member of the public about the lack of a sex question, the Police Scotland Research and Insight Team stated that “we do not need to know someone’s biological sex characteristics. What is important, is how they identify their gender”.

The full response is shown below:

“We aim to ensure that the way in which we ask equality monitoring questions is as accessible and inclusive as possible. And, importantly, that we only ask questions where it is relevant to do so. For us, this particular question is important so that we are able to ensure our services (in this context, local policing) are relevant, accessible and inclusive for everyone.

We ask about someone’s gender identity, rather than their biological sex characteristics, because we know that the gender of a person (which may or may not be the same as they were assigned at birth) is a key factor which shapes people’s experiences of local policing. Understanding the views and experiences of Scotland’s diverse communities is critical for our approach to policing in Scotland.

As a key public service in Scotland, it is vital that we are inclusive to all; including people who are LGBTI, and those who aren’t. Having a question which asks about gender identity, rather than biological sex, is part of our inclusive approach. As we don’t deliver services where the physical sex characteristics of a person would change how we deliver those services, e.g. health services, we do not need to know someone’s biological sex characteristics. What is important, is how they identify their gender. For most people, their biological sex will match the gender identity assigned to them at birth. For people where this is not the case, we want to create an environment where they know that their experiences and views are welcomed and valued.”

The Police Scotland explanation is surprising on several counts, not least because sex is an established determinant across a range of policing related outcomes and experiences. We are not aware of any evidence to suggest that physical sex is no longer relevant to policing, as the Police Scotland response asserts. Further, as a protected characteristic, Police Scotland are required to take sex into account for equality monitoring purposes, and when developing its policies.

Surprising? It's astonishing. Sex is so obviously a key factor in crime statistics, both on the perpetrator and the victim side – never mind the legal requirements under the Equality Act. But then this is the country where a woman, Marion Millar, is being charged with a hate crime for homophobic and transphobic social media posts, which consisted largely of a photograph of a bow of ribbons in the green, white and purple colours of the Suffragettes, tied around a tree. And where the head of a Rape Crisis Centre is a transwoman who thinks it's his job to get women who've been raped to "reframe their trauma" through the lens of trans ideology.