Actually, maybe you can explain this question I have about the strategy pursued here by trans rights campaigners,
RobinMoiraWhite.
When I attended the parliamentary debate about the census question, it was clear that one, possibly the main, reason for the underprovision of the trans community was the lack of accurate data about their size. What we have is not up to date. We know we have around 400 GRC-holders and an estimate from Scottish trans organisations in 2003 that 40% of the trans community would not seek medical support and so not qualify under the original GRA. At a bare minimum then we know we have just under 700 members of the trans community living in Scotland. Many in Edinburgh and Glasgow, as this is a pattern repeated elsewhere (small numbers rurally, more in big cities where there is then also more support).
Of course, waiting lists for a first appointment of between 7 and 33 months for an adult referral tell us that we have a much bigger trans community in Scotland than just 700.
Just for Glasgow, in the 27 months to March 2021 there were adult 1068 referrals to the Sandyford clinic. Edinburgh will be the same. Numbers have been steadily rising since 2013.
For 2015, 16 and 17, we have 966 referrals to the children's and youth service. For 18, 19, 20 and 21 we have at least another 800.
If you add them all up, that's more than 5000 referrals across child and adult services over the last 8 years.
We're probably looking at 5000 to 10,000 medical referrals altogether, which is 0.1 to 0.2% of the total population. Add at least another 2000 to 4000 (that minimum of 40% who won't ask for a referral).
Yes, that's a tiny percentage and its far below even the more conservative estimates from Scottish trans organisations. But the prevalence of gender dysphoria in children which is used for planning purposes is much lower than that still. Around 6 in 100000 for children (0.006%) and for adults the prevalence rate of transsexualism is estimated (lots of different ones) variously as 1 in 10,000 for males and less than half that for females.
It's almost impossible for anyone to estimate, and the estimates we have are often based on referrals to a clinic, so they're not going to include those who are not going to or have not yet sought medical support.
Planners may well be underestimating need by a factor of 100. But in a stretched NHS, stressed economy and the fraught budgeting circumstances of the Scottish government mean that no planner can justify allocating the necessary ressources, whether that's the NHS or any other public service. Not without evidence of need and not when trans healthcare is just one of many struggling NHS services in Scotland.
And the census gave us a chance to rectify that. If I was running a trans rights organisation, I would have asked everyone to fill in the sex question as per birth sex or legal sex. Then encouraged everyone in my community to fill in the gender question accurately.
When the data is analysed, for the first time you'd get accurate numbers to argue with. Numbers that will impact provisions for the trans community for decades.
But no. Instead there's this insurmountable short-termism in play. An affront to self-identification. So the census won't capture even a fraction of the trans community. And for what? So you can win a debate in 2021 but ensure underprovision until 2051?