FOI Ref: FOI/2023/4748
You asked
Please provide the list of every distinct gender identity entered by respondents in the 2021 Census for England and Wales (the write-in answer to Q27 of the individual schedule), along with the number of respondents entering that identity. Please include punctuation and spaces, for example distinguishing 'trans woman' from 'transwoman'.
Naturally I understand that you cannot disclose any identity entered by fewer than 5 respondents.
We said
Thank you for your request.
Unfortunately, we are not able to provide a list of all write-in responses for the gender identity question.
The official statistics that we have produced regarding gender identity from the 2021 Census have undergone rigorous analysis in order to produce robust, valuable, good quality, trustworthy statistics that fulfil our statutory obligation to comply with the Code of Practice for Statistics. If we were to release a full list of all write-in responses, even on an ad hoc basis, this would risk undermining the analysis we have conducted and the purposes for data collection, and put information into the public domain that does not hold statistical value.
Therefore, the release of this information would likely prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs, and is exempt under Section 36(2)(c) of FOIA.
This exemption is subject to a public interest test. Whilst we appreciate the importance of transparency regarding the information we have collected, we also must ensure that, as an official producer of statistics, we uphold the trust of the public and the government in the quality and robustness of the information we release. If this trust is undermined by the ad hoc release of information that has not undergone the necessary analysis to produce valuable information, this runs the risk of the government and the public no longer relying on our statistical outputs to make well-informed decisions for the public good.
On balance, the public interest falls in favour of withholding the requested information in this case.
However, we acknowledge the interest in this area of our work and we will explore how we can produce further publications that meet this interest.