Facts against political interests

al sex is the same as your gender erases your statistical presence.

In January Sir Ian Diamond, head of the ONS, told the Today programme it had moved to a definition of legal sex only. Sense seemed to have prevailed. Yet weeks later, when the ONS announced its guidance, it said sex could be defined by a document “such as a passport”. But passport gender can be changed with a simple letter: it does not constitute legal sex. Then in late February, with no official announcement, the ONS made the census live, so people could start filling it in. It had pushed through a policy, regardless of expert opposition or the law, and now insisted it was too late for a legal challenge.

Within days Fair Play crowdfunded £100,000 from 3,200 people and were before a judge who upheld their case, ordering the ONS to change the guidance on the sex question. The ONS could not unilaterally amend the legal definition of a key demographic variable.

Why does this matter? Because it exposes the depth of civil service policy capture. Self-ID on the census was supported by the ONS, the Cabinet Office, NHS England and even the Equality and Human Rights Commission, whose whole purpose is to uphold “protected characteristics” under the 2010 Equalities Act, including sex. These are public bodies which all pay to participate in Stonewall’s diversity champions programme. Thus taxpayers are funding a lobby group to pressure the government to undermine a law it opposes but has failed to change by open democratic means; a law which protects women….

A full inquiry is needed into this travesty: why did the ONS squander public funds and its own reputation? And what is the relationship between its senior team and activists?

Increasingly the political divide is not between left and right but between those who uphold objectivity, data, evidence and rule of law versus those who will jettison everything, even science and reason, for ideology. If we cannot trust our gold-standard data body to defend facts against political interests, we are truly lost.

A full inquiry is needed not just into this travesty, but into the whole extent of Stonewall UK's influence in institutions across the country via its highly political diversity champions scheme, from the government here, to universities, to the BBC. They all bought into it in the name of progress and inclusion and being nice and smiley, but its true ideology now needs to be exposed and questioned. Why are taxpayers funding this scheme when it so clearly undermines the rights and protections of half the population?