Women working for the Office for National Statistics (ONS) face grievance or disciplinary procedures if they object to male-born colleagues using single-sex lavatories and changing rooms, documents leaked to the Sunday Telegraph reveal.
Gender critical campaigners say the cache of HR policies, internal communications and posts from the ONS intranet show the extent to which the statistics body has been subject to “institutional capture” by trans activists.
Among the bundle of HR policies, internal communications and posts taken from the ONS’s intranet is one document titled “Gender Identity and Transitioning at Work”, which includes a manager’s checklist for supporting a transitioning employee with a section headed “use of single-sex facilities”.
It says: “Have you agreed when the employee will start to use single-sex facilities, such as toilets and changing rooms, appropriate to their acquired gender? This will usually be on the first day of transition.”
The document instructs that “if colleagues object to sharing facilities with employees going through transition, the situation should be dealt with through communication, discussion and education”.
In situations where staff members “persist with unreasonable objections”, the document adds that “you may need to manage the situation via grievance or disciplinary procedures”.
The ONS policy on single-sex lavatories appears to go considerably beyond trans guidance currently being drawn up for the Civil Service.
A draft update to the Cabinet Office’s trans guidance which was leaked last year states that while an employee with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) would be “legally entitled” to access single-sex lavatories in their acquired gender, transitioning civil servants without a GRC could be asked to use alternative gender-neutral facilities, such as disabled toilets. The draft guidance also states that women must have the right to question or criticise transgender identity without being bullied, harassed or discriminated against in the workplace.
Sex Matters, a gender-critical campaign group that has reviewed the ONS documents, said the policies showed that “trans activist demands have been centred and prioritised, seemingly with no consideration of the consequences”.
Fiona McAnena, Sex Matters’ director of campaigns, said: “The ONS staff documents that have been leaked are inaccurate, ideologically driven and inflammatory. This is what institutional capture looks like.
“These documents would be a cause for concern in any public sector body,” she added. “That they come from within the national statistics body helps explain why the ONS made such a mess of the census questions on sex and ‘gender identity’.”
This isn’t the first time that allegations of ‘institutional capture’ have been levelled at the ONS.
Back in 2021, Alice Sullivan, a gender-critical professor of sociology at University College London (UCL) revealed that ONS staff had been “complicit” in cancelling her from a seminar discussion intended as an opportunity for researchers and policymakers to hear a range of views on how Britain conducts its census.
Prof Sullivan, a quantitative sociologist who believes it is crucial for population data not to conflate biological sex and subjective gender identity, had initially been invited to talk at the event by NatCen, a research body which works closely with the ONS.
However, the event was cancelled after some attendees alleged that Prof Sullivan held “anti-trans views”. Emails disclosed under a Subject Access Request (SAR) reveal fears “that including Prof Sullivan as a panellist could be seen as NatCen endorsing anti-trans views, risking reputational damage and perhaps more importantly risking harm to staff and audience members”.
NatCen CEO Guy Goodwin subsequently told Prof Sullivan that a “subsidiary factor” in the cancellation of the event had been the “mood music” coming from the ONS. Goodwin said that people there were unhappy about her criticisms of gender ideology’s impact on public policy, had questioned her motives (i.e., suggested she was ‘anti-trans’), and had threatened to pull out of the event if she was allowed to speak.
Earlier this year, it emerged that senior leaders at the ONS – all of whom happen to be on the body’s LGBTQ+ staff network – voiced concern about the “impact” on trans employees after the UK’s statistics regulator, as well as leading academics, questioned its methodology for counting transgender people in the census.
An inquiry into the findings from the ONS census was launched after the collated data showed 262,000 people (or 0.5% of the population over 16) in England identify as trans.
Academics with expertise in quantitative social research – including Prof Sullivan – immediately queried the finding, and warned that the wording of the relevant census question – “is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?” – was problematic. Not only did it assume that everyone has a gender identity, but the wording may also have been confusing for respondents whose first language was not English.
Michael Biggs, a professor of sociology at the University of Oxford, described the results as “scarcely credible” and said that confusion over the meaning of the question may explain why the London boroughs of Newham (1.5%) and Brent (1.3%), which have a significant percentage of residents who speak English as a second language, recorded the highest proportion of transgender people in the UK.
The controversy led to a review by the Office for Statistics Regulation, which last October concluded that the ONS should have done more to communicate “the inherent uncertainties” relating to the data.
Following publication of that review, Jen Woolford, the ONS’s director of population statistics, hit back at the regulator, suggesting there was no problem, and that the ONS continued to have “confidence in our gender identity estimates at a national level”.
Ms Woolford then decided to write to ONS staff about the controversy over the data in her capacity as “sponsor” of the organisation’s “LGBTQ+ and Allies Network”.
The message was co-authored with the ONS’s deputy national statistician for health, population and methods, Emma Rourke, and Darren Morgan, its director of economic statistics production and analysis. Like Ms Woolford, both are sponsors of the LGBTQ+ and Allies Network.
Titled “a message of support for colleagues in the LGBTQ+ community”, the message began by noting “recent media coverage of our statistics around sexual orientation and gender identity.
“Over the past few weeks,” the message continued, “we have been speaking with trans colleagues and those in the wider LGBTQ+ community about the impact this has had on their wellbeing. In light of this, we want to reaffirm our commitment to providing an inclusive workplace in ONS where everyone can feel safe and can bring their full self to work.”
The message went on to signpost employees to services if they had been “impacted” by the situation, before adding: “Please support colleagues during this time and recognise that we are all impacted by this situation in different ways.”
Speaking to the Telegraph about the body’s politicised approach to employee relations, Prof Biggs said: “It is troubling that the ONS has treated scrutiny of its data as a threat to its staff.
“A key question is whether ONS has been granting its ‘LGBTQ+ and Allies Network’ undue influence over the collection of data on sex and gender,” he added.
The ONS is the publicly funded executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, which is accountable to Parliament.
