My Lords, I have put my name to this amendment and I shall speak in support of it. I very much welcome the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, presented the argument. He gave a lot of detail, and at this time of night I will not go over it again, but I want to emphasise one or two points.
To begin with, I say that I sort of understand the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and I take them seriously, because anybody who thinks that any proposed legislation will discriminate against one group deserves to be heard and to have those questions explored. But at the core of this is the collection of data; we are an immensely data-rich society at the moment. Sitting here, throughout the debates this evening, there have been so many times
when the argument that has been put forward has depended on the collection of data. Whichever public service you look at, whether it be education, health, the criminal law or whatever, much of the progress that we have made over previous decades has been because we have had the ability to collect data.
I am a woman, and I think that my sex has made many advances over the past decades because people arguing for legislation that has protected women, men, people with disabilities and people who are transgender have been able to make the case only because they have been able to collect the data. Unless you have the data, you are arguing vaguely about some impression about something that might happen, so I am deeply wedded to the idea of collecting data in the formation of public policy and the advancement of political ideas.
I think that is defensible, but I do not take for granted the fact that we do not give something up in the collection of that data. I will be honest. I am trustee of a number of charities, as I think everybody in this Chamber is. Every year, when I am asked to fill in the data declaration, I see another bit of data there. Sometimes, I think “Why do they want to know that about me?”, and the one I am saying that about at the moment is sexuality. I sit there, I tick the box that says “heterosexual”, and I think “What’s that got to do with me being a trustee of this body?” But I sign it, because I think that, on the whole, that declaration of bits of information about ourselves can be put to the common public good. If we were to look at charities, without declaring that information, how do we ever get to make the argument that women, or people who are black or from ethnic minorities, or from the gay community, are not represented on charities? Whether we like it or not—and I accept that it is difficult to come to terms with it sometimes—it is about the protection, rights and freedoms of individuals. But I would never say that we do not pay a price for the collection of this data, or that we must not continuously and constantly make sure that the data we are asking to be collected is in the public policy interest.
That is why I have come to this amendment and why I very much support the arguments that have been made. What the amendment asks is simply that we collect two bits of data, among others. One is the sex at birth and the other is any gender acquired during the lifetime of the person. Without that, I do not know how we can go on to develop public policy in the pursuit of those who have committed crime and of the public duty to protect those who have been victims of crime. Unless we have the data about how many of which groups there are, they will be ignored.
I have sat through a long and very interesting debate today. My noble friend on the Front Bench said that one of the most important things about the Bill before the Committee is that it is a Bill about protecting women and girls. I do not know how you do that unless you collect the data. We have heard about county lines and knife crime. Unless we collect the data to know that many of the people who are drawn in and persuaded to commit those crimes are young men, we cannot develop a suite of policies that support them. When we collect data about sex, it is entirely proper to ask about acquired gender as well. We must not conflate the two.
The problem at the moment is that different police forces are collecting data about sex at birth and about gender acquired at some other point and then conflating the two. We do not have the sequencing of data and information across police forces in this country that can enable us to make public policy. That is what this amendment is asking. It wants to disaggregate those, as the mover of the amendment has said.
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The amendment wants to begin to collect the data so that public policy can follow it, but it does not ignore the fact that this is sensitive and must be done in a confidential and sensitive way, with a clear purpose of public policy. It is not beyond the wit of our society to collect that data in a way that does exactly that. The amendment does not say how it will be collected. It is easy to make an argument that it will become about outing yourself or declaring it publicly, but it need not be so, because that is not required. The purpose of this amendment is the collection of accurate data in the proper pursuit of public policy and the protection of individuals. I very much hope that the Minister will give it serious consideration and let us know the Government’s views.