Question reference: S5W-32712
- Asked by: Johann Lamont, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 22 October 2020
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Current status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 4 November 2020
Question
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of concerns raised in the report, Sex and the Census, what plans it has to review the consultation process that established the question on what sex a person is for the 2022 census.
Answer
National Records of Scotland has taken forward a range of consultation activities over a number of years to help inform the successful development of questions for Scotland's Census. The conclusions reached have drawn evidence from stakeholder events, public debate, written correspondence, Parliamentary scrutiny, expert advice, lived experience and has enabled NRS to bring together a set of questions which are accessible to people across Scotland, build on the learning from past censuses and will deliver outputs that will meet a wide range of census user needs.
One conclusion of this work was that Scotland's Census would continue to include a binary sex question. The consultation stage associated with question development for Scotland's Census has been completed. National Records of Scotland is now focussing its attention on working with people across Scotland to ensure that Scotland's Census in 2022 has the highest possible response rate so that the wide and varied needs of users for Census Outputs can be met.