It is very good, actually; I had some on Saturday. I have not tried to do that but if I did, will I have to admit being gay, as well as being a shoplifter?
In 2018, the Government tentatively estimated that there were between 200,000 and 500,000 trans people in the UK. Noble Lords have said they like data; I am going to give them lots of data. Between the Gender Recognition Act coming into force and 2018, 4,910 trans people have been issued with a gender recognition certificate. If we take the top of the range of the estimate, I make that 0.75% of the population identifying as trans and 0.0076% of the overall population having a gender recognition certificate, or less than one in 10,000 people.
Even if a victim went through the whole criminal justice process without disclosing, and without the police establishing the sex assigned to them at birth, if they were a trans woman, it would increase the number of woman victims, and if they were a trans man, it would diminish the number of woman victims, and taken together, and taking account of the total number of trans people, it would even out. Taking into account that only a fraction of them will become victims of crime who report it to the police, any difference to the crime statistics will be statistically insignificant.
The police arrest, on average, 12 in 1,000 people each year—three in 1,000 women. I do not know how many of the estimated 7.5 in 1,000 trans people are trans women and how many are trans men. Of course, if trans women are counted in the female offender figures, they will also be counted in the female population figures, boosting both the numerator and the denominator. I was never any good at mathematics—I left that to my twin brother—but it is quite clear to me that trans
people are not going to make any statistically significant difference to the crime figures unless we assume, and there is no factual or statistical basis to think otherwise, that trans people are more likely to commit crime or to commit particular types of crime.
Midnight
Some people will point to rape statistics—somebody has already mentioned it this evening. They will say that only men can commit rape and, therefore, any woman who is recorded as having been convicted of rape must be a trans woman. That is not true. If a woman acts in joint enterprise with a man in order to commit rape, they are both guilty of rape, whether the woman restrains the victim, drugs the victim or in any other way acts as an accessory to the rape.
There is no evidence that the tiny proportion of trans people in the population, of which an even smaller proportion will be trans women, of which an even smaller proportion will have a gender recognition certificate, of which an even smaller proportion will commit crime or become a victim, and an even smaller proportion of which will be arrested, will make any significant difference to recorded crime, whether as victims or perpetrators. The noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, says that this is a serious gap in our crime statistics. Is he really saying, after all his experience with the police, working with CRIS in the Metropolitan Police, that this is a significant gap in the crime statistics, based on the data that I have just given the Committee?
This amendment is unreasonable, impractical and unnecessary and we oppose it.