Following a legal challenge, a High Court judge has ordered ONS to amend its guidance to the sex question in the 2021 census, and granted permission to @fairplaywomen to proceed to a full judicial review, to be held on 18 March. theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/m…
The amended guidance now defines the sex question in terms of legal sex, not self-identified sex. The ruling does not affect the new voluntary gender identity question, which remains unchanged. 
In February, the ONS produced a paper that outlined how it had reached its final decision on the sex question guidance. The paper also drew on a piece of qualitative research, undertaken by the ONS in Oct/Nov 2020. uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/wp-content/upl…
In this briefing we examine the ONS paper, and underpinning qualitative research. We argue that the ONS has not fully engaged with the substantive arguments as to why data on biological sex is important, nor demonstrated why such data is no longer needed. murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2021/03/08/mbm…
There is no evidence to suggest a balance of views between expert population data users who require data on biological sex, & those who require data on ‘self-identified’ sex. Nor has ONS addressed the key concerns raised by expert data users in relation to data reliability.
The ONS’ conclusions on continuity appear to rely on the flawed assumption that self-reported sex is synonymous with self-identified sex, & all previous censuses recorded the latter. However, editing/imputation rules show the 2001/2011 censuses treated the sex question as legal.
The census is the UK’s gold standard data collection exercise, which means the sex guidance will influence other surveys, including medical research. There is already evidence that public authorities are shifting away from collecting data on biological sex.
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