Stop the ONS redefining sex in the Census

Legal costs recovery

As you’ll know from our previous update, winning costs starts a process of negotiation and adjudication, in which our claim is assessed via the court. The ONS is not obliged to pay our bills in full, only to pay for what are deemed "reasonable" costs incurred. We had to do a lot of work in a very short time to be fully prepared. Inevitably, some of that preparatory work and research was not presented in court. The ONS can use this to claim that they should not pay for that work. Our final bill was £108,000. The ONS paid £46,000 immediately after the hearing, and agreed in August to pay a further £20,000. That means that as of now we have used £42,000 of our crowdfunded total to make up the shortfall, so that our solicitors and barristers are paid in full. Discussions continue.

Scottish Census

On 31 August the National Records of Scotland announced their intention to permit self-declared gender identity as an answer to the sex question in the Scottish Census, to be conducted in March 2022. We are working through various channels on ways to restore the data integrity of the Scottish Census, as you would expect. This includes registering our serious concerns with the regulator, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). We were pleased to see that the OSR has now raised their concerns with the NRS, as reported in The Times today . Legal action is a last resort but is of course an option we are actively considering. We have three months to issue proceedings starting from the NRS announcement on 31st August. So we have until end November to make a decision,  though we expect to make that decision well before that deadline.