Police should record biological sex after arrests, minister says, after report claims criminals can pick their own gender

20 March 2025, 09:27

Police officers should record biological sex when making arrests, the Armed Forces Minister has told LBC.

The accurate collection of biological sex is “vital”, Luke Pollard has said following a report that warned against removing this information.

It comes after an independent review said police forces and the NHS should collect biological data, rather than the person’s self-declared gender identity.

The report urged Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to issue an immediate order to all English and Welsh police forces to ensure they record biological data.

Speaking to LBC’s Nick Ferrari, Mr Pollard said: “We are absolutely clear that the accurate collection of personal information like this, including sex, is an important part of effective public services.

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“I know the Home Secretary is looking at this area to make sure that we're keeping the public safe, but we've received that report and it will be shared with the relevant organisations within government.

“We've been absolutely clear that we've inherited a situation that we're not comfortable with certain aspects of how the criminal justice system works.

“We want to make reforms to policing so it can be more effective.”

However, the author of the report Professor Alice Sullivan, commissioned by the previous government, said data on sex has not been lost by a decision to stop collecting it.

Rather "because there's been a confusion between sex and transgender and gender diverse identities", and there have been attempts to "merge these two things into one variable", she told the BBC.

Individuals have been able to change their gender marker on their NHS records while crime statistics have recorded some people's preferred gender, rather than their actual sex, she added.

Ms Sullivan said: "It's this confusion around the word gender, which I think everybody used to recognise as simply a synonym for sex, and it's become something else - it's become a way of recording gender diverse identities.

"What I've argued in this report is that sex is really important, we should be recording it by default - transgender and gender diverse identities can also be recorded where that's appropriate.

"There's no reason to see this as a trade-off between the two. They're two distinct variables."

She added: "Absolutely, I think Government needs to implement these recommendations across the board - we can't just do it piece by piece, because this is everywhere.

"I've recommended that data on sex should be collected by default in all research and data collection commissioned by Government and quasi-governmental organisations, and I think implementing that would make a huge difference. "I think we need leadership, because people are confused and they're anxious.

"This is not a partisan issue, and it's very damaging when it starts to be seen as a partisan issue, it's a basic common sense issue, not a left-right issue."