Why the Sullivan Review on sex and gender data matters

Carys Moseley analyses the Sullivan Review, and breaks down why these key recommendations are so important in a nation overrun by radical transgender ideology

Last month the government published the Sullivan Review, setting out recommendations on collecting and publishing sex and gender data in the public sector. The review has two main aims:

“Identifying obstacles to accurate data collection and research on sex and on gender identity in public bodies and in the research system,”

and

“Setting out good practice guidance for how to collect data on sex and gender identity.”

The review was commissioned in February 2024 by the then-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. The reason for doing so was concern expressed by academics and policymakers – in other words people inside the government – about ‘the loss of robust, standardised data on sex in the UK’ (p. 16). This in itself is the result of a gradual shift towards sex being redefined, and the term ‘gender’ being introduced, which also has changing meanings.

Sex is defined in the review as biological sex. The term ‘legal sex’ is the sex indicated on a Gender Recognition Certificate, i.e. not actually biological but constructed through surgery and recognised by officialdom. This distinction brings greater clarity to the whole field of official data.

Many public bodies have stopped collecting data on sex

The Sullivan Review sets out the stark reality of this decline in data collection in great detail, having asked people to send in examples of questionnaire wording for surveys sent out last year, focussing particularly on the public sector. An appendix published all these problematic questionnaire wordings.

The United Kingdom is not alone in having seen this pattern of decline. The same has been happening in Canada and New Zealand.

The bulk of the review goes through major fields where this loss has happened, including health and social care, criminal and civil justice, education and early years, employers and employees, labour market income and housing, surveys on social and political attitudes, sport leisure and recreation, travel and transports, and general household surveys.

A history of loss of data on sex

Chapter 7 surveys the history of data on sex since the Second World War, between 1946 and 2023. This information comes from over 500 surveys kept in the UK Database Service. Questions asking for ‘gender’ rather than ‘sex’ started appearing from 1990 onwards. The trend accelerated in the early 2000s.

Sullivan does not indicate that this coincided with the transsexual rights campaign taking the Blair government to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The UK government lost its case, and the government then passed the Gender Recognition Act.

Between 2000 and 2014, as many as 40% of the surveys used the term ‘gender’ for sex. From 2015 onwards, ‘gender’ started to mean ‘gender identity’, purely in terms of someone’s self-understanding.

Review of guidance on collecting data on sex

One of the most helpful things the review does is to assess the guidance on collecting data on sex by different organisations. This particular sub-review is confined to documentation from the last decade. Here there is a wide variety of guidance. What the review team had to say is sobering:

“The range of publications reflects a lack of authoritative UK guidance and a loss of consensus as to how sex should be defined for the purposes of data collection.” (p.56)

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is said to be working on guidance for public authorities, however nothing has yet been published. The review team gives a detailed picture of the change in approach at the EHRC. Whereas in the early 2010s the EHRC still distinguished sex from gender identity (whilst promoting data collection on the latter), by 2019 it was advocating self-definition of sex via its Scottish office.

More recently the pendulum has swung back a little, with the EHRC stating that ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 is sex ‘subject to [having a]’ Gender Recognition Certificate, as in the Gender Recognition Act. The Sullivan Review points out that this is not consistently made clear on the EHRC website.

The Scottish Government comes in for strong criticism as well, as do other Scottish public bodies that appeared to be ready to cave into the government’s unreasonable demands to shift away from collecting data about sex. There is also a great deal of focus as expected on the Office of National Statistics and its handling of the sex and gender identity questions in the Census.

Market Research and surveys

The Sullivan Review is not solely concerned with public bodies, however. It does also look at some charities and businesses that have had influence. For example, it is rather critical of the Market Research Society for providing guidance recommending multiple choice questions rather than a sex binary question.

This has influenced the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, which then cited the MRS guidance as a justification for ceasing to collect data on the sex of respondents in its Community Life Survey from 2018 onwards.

Market research and polling company Ipsos also comes in for criticism, which is significant as it has carried out many of the major surveys for the government, including the GP Patient Survey and the National Travel Survey. Ipsos recommended self-identification options for everyone – even for children.

Charities influencing higher education

The charity sector is not exempt, though the Sullivan Review does not zero in on regulators such as the Charity Commission or its Scottish or Northern Irish equivalents. Of particular interest is Advance HE, formed in 2018 by amalgamation of the Equality Challenge Unit, the Higher Education Academy and Leadership and Foundation for Higher Education.

The Equality Challenge Unit had been promoting gender self-identification in higher education since 2004 (p. 74, fn. 209), and appears to have been influenced by the transsexual campaign group Press For Change (p. 30).

In 2016 the ECU issued guidance on supporting trans staff that told institutions not to collect data on sex. Perhaps unsurprisingly this situation had changed by 2021 when its successor Advance HE recommended institutions always ask a question on sex, admitting that gender identity is not a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010.

This is all highly relevant when we consider how many people now go to university, and the fact that universities and colleges have been the sites of major cultural disputes over sex and gender. It is specifically important for Christians given that theological colleges get accredited by universities.

Evaluating the recommendations

The Sullivan Review sets forth numerous key recommendations for public bodies’ future handling of data on sex and gender.

Data should be routinely collected – agreed. It cannot be right that data on sex is collected sporadically, whilst data on gender is collected more frequently. This subtle prioritisation has been very much behind the erosion of standards.

Sex data should be collected by default – agreed. The review provides detailed histories of the loss of – and at times return to – this default in several organisations, demonstrating the consequences where they are known.

Questions combining sex and gender should not be asked – this is right. Combining these two terms has only served to create confusion. It is in reality the legacy of the Gender Recognition Act, which sought to promote the use of ‘gender’ in many instances, whilst keeping ‘sex’ for selected others, such as motherhood.

Questions on gender should be avoided – again, this is the right recommendation. Inclusion of questions on gender has been confusing for many people, due to the word changing meaning over time.

The NHS should cease the practice of issuing new NHS numbers and changed ‘gender’ markers to individuals, as this means that data on sex is lost, thereby putting individuals at risk regarding clinical care, screening, and safeguarding, as well as making vital research following up individuals who have been through a gender transition across the life course impossible. In the case of children, this practice poses a particularly serious safeguarding risk, and should be suspended as a matter of urgency.

This is very important. The Cass Review found that new NHS numbers would be issued to children who were deemed by some irresponsible adults to have changed gender.

Questions on DSD should be avoided, as people with a DSD have a sex. This matter often gets avoided in the discussion of the issues. Sullivan understands that ‘DSD’ stands for two alternative terms for the same phenomenon (misleadingly termed intersex in popular speech) – Disorders of Sexual Development and Differences of Sexual Development. When the Sullivan reviewers say that people with a DSD have a sex, they mean sex in the chromosomal/genotypical sense as recognised by the NHS Data Dictionary.

Organisational culture

Having made all these recommendations about information processing, the Sullivan Review proceeds further to recommend changes in organisational culture. This is where the Sullivan Review, if implemented, could have a positive effect on the workplace across the country.

Many of the Christian Legal Centre’s cases have resulted precisely from clashes with organisational culture in the workplace. If we take a brief look at some of them, we can see how they have emerged from the problems which the Sullivan Review scrutinises.

The Darlington Nurses

The Darlington Nurses did not want to share a changing room with a man who, despite not having had any gender reassignment surgery, identifies as a woman. The County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust told them they needed to be ‘educated’ and ‘compromise’. They are fighting a legal case for sex discrimination and sexual harassment.

They founded the Darlington Nurses Union, a gender-critical trade union, and have drafted guidelines pitched at NHS trusts that respect the distinction between sex and gender reassignment as protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010. This is a good example of how to introduce a positive change in organisational culture, correctly targeting the problem of ambiguous guidelines which form the backbone of the Sullivan Review.

In December, Shadow Equalities Minister Claire Coutinho told them that equality and diversity policies in the public sector need to be changed. A change to equality policies would require better questionnaire wording, another key recommendation of the Sullivan Review.

Jennifer Melle

For refusing to refer to a male paedophile prisoner and patient as a ‘woman’, Jennifer Melle, an experienced Christian nurse, has been disciplined by an NHS trust. This patient is in prison after multiple convictions for luring boys into sex acts while pretending to be a teenage girl on social media. Jennifer Melle was racially abused and physically threatened. Epsom and St Helier University Hospital Trust didn’t support Jennifer.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has also said that Jennifer is ‘a potential risk’ for not using Mr X’s preferred ‘gender identity.’ One of the many troubling findings of the Sullivan Review is that criminals are being allowed to self-identify their gender in a lot of instances. The problem is widespread in police forces and prisons (tables 8 and 9).

Recently Christian Concern’s Head of Public Policy, Tim Dieppe, argued that Jennifer Melle’s case shows the NHS is effectively operating a policy of compelled lying. As the review’s historical evidence suggests, there is a very long paper trail to support this argument, both in the NHS and in the prison system.

Call for review of the civil service

The Sullivan Review also boldly recommends a review of activism and impartiality in the civil service. I think this is long overdue; it is clear that the problems have become deeply embedded inside government, and from chapter 7 in particular we can see that these problems precede the passage of the Gender Recognition Act.

The review also asks government ministers to “consider the government’s vulnerability to activism and introduce safeguards.” In other words, it is asking them to investigate the problem of entryism and act on it.

Conclusion

This issue of confusion around sex and gender in public sector data is ubiquitous. Far from being a marginal ‘single issue’, it cuts across all government departments and public bodies, as well as affecting the charity and business sectors. This is also a first-order Gospel issue. Even Anglican Clergy have been invited to lie, and subsequently caved in. As the Sullivan Review shows, even charities have not been exempt.

The review’s recommendations on sex questions need to be implemented universally. They show how far standards in the public sector especially, but even in the charity sector, have fallen due to managers caving in to trans activism. Should the recommendations be implemented they would be a vital step towards changing an organisational culture which has held so much negative sway over so many people’s working lives.