Oxford professor reveals his tough two-year battle to make stats chiefs admit they had massively overstated the number of transgender people in Britain

An Oxford University professor says he was shunned and branded a 'transphobe' during a two-year battle to convince the Office for National Statistics (ONS) it had massively overstated the number of transgender people in Britain.

Professor Michael Biggs, trustee of the charity Sex Matters, launched a campaign for the latest census data to be looked at again after the ONS suggested there are 262,000 transgender people in the UK.

He finally saw some vindication last week after the Office for Statistics Regulations (OSR), the industry watchdog, said in a damning report that the figures were unreliable and must be discarded as an 'accredited official statistic'.

It was the first time in more than 220 years of the census that data had been downgraded.

The furore began when the 2021 Office for National Statistics ( ONS ) census – the first to count transgender people – had asked the question: 'Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?'

But the sociology professor instinctively felt there was something not quite right with the figures, when it identified Brent, in northwest London - his home borough - as second to Newham, in east London, with the highest numbers of transgender people.

According to the numbers, Newham - at 1.5 per cent - and Brent - at 1.3 per cent - had the highest proportion of transgender people in the UK.

If true, these boroughs had trans communities around a third higher in population than Brighton & Hove, where LGBT communities are well-established.

But it didn't quite fit with the rest of the demographics: both Brent and Newham have large, religiously conservative migrant populations.

Speaking to The Telegraph , he explained: 'We know the milieu that many trans people come from, which is often a professional, very queer, alternative milieu – the sort that you find in Brighton.'

Professor Biggs theorised that people in Newham and Brent may have simply misunderstood the question because English is not their first language.

Last week, the OSR backed up this idea in its findings - that people with a foreign first language were four times more likely to say they were 'trans' than those who have English as their main language.

But the findings fall short of completing agreeing with Professor Biggs.

Despite conceding its question was flawed, the ONS said it 'cannot say with certainty' if its estimate of the size of the trans population in Britain is 'an overestimate or an underestimate'.

Still, it's somewhat of a vindication for Professor Biggs, who claims he has paid a huge personal price within the academic community to get this far.

One example he cites is that he tried to convince the industry-renowned BMJ Open not to use the same-worded question on gender identity in their annual GP patient survey.

Prof Biggs recalled: 'The on the GP patient survey found that trans people are more likely to have dementia, but we don't know if this is actually the case or if people who have dementia are just more confused by the question.'

He claims when he highlighted this to the authors, he was ignored. When he then tried to submit an , he claims the editor refused to publish it.

In internal emails released by BMJ Open on his request, Prof Biggs discovered that the editor had warned his staff that he was 'known for being transphobic'.

Biggs has also raised concerns that the ONS' relationship with gay rights group Stonewall may have had some bearing on the question being included in the census.

Last week he said: 'I suspect the ONS's close relationship with gay rights group Stonewall and deference to its 'LGBTQ+ and Allies network' contributed to this question being developed without proper scrutiny.'

Maya Forstater, chief executive of the Sex Matters charity, said previously that Professor Biggs's work had 'exposed that figures produced by the ONS on the transgender population are totally unreliable'.

'The statistics regulator is investigating, and we hope it will declare that the figures on gender identity are not fit to be recognised as 'national statistics'.'

After being contacted by MailOnline, a spokeswoman for the BMJ Group, which publishes BMJ Open, said: 'We do not comment publicly on individual editorial decisions, but deny absolutely any suggestion that BMJ Group would reject content for political or ideological reasons.'

A Stonewall spokesperson said the charity was one of several organisations that had been consulted by the ONS on questions relating to LGBTQ+ people.

In a statement Stonewall said: 'It is standard practice for the ONS to listen to a wide range of voices with different perspectives when preparing census questions.'