The Evidence Is Clear: Trans People Are Not a Threat to British Society

An Analysis of Public Opinion, Official Data, and Moral Responsibility in 2026

Bea Groves-McDaniel

Introduction

In the summer of 2026, trans people in Britain find themselves at the centre of a political and moral storm that shows no sign of abating. Media coverage is relentless, parliamentary time is consumed, and public opinion has shifted in worrying ways. Yet beneath the noise of culture-war rhetoric lies a remarkably clear empirical picture: there is no credible evidence that trans people constitute a harmful group within British society.

This piece draws on official government data, peer-reviewed research, and the most robust public opinion surveys available to make a straightforward argument. Using Kant's categorical imperative and John Stuart Mill's Harm Principle (two of the most enduring frameworks in moral philosophy) it argues that the burden of proof in any debate about restricting minority rights must fall on those who wish to restrict them, and that burden has not been met.

How Many Trans People Are There?

The 2021 Census was the first to ask a direct question about gender identity across the whole of the UK. The results, published by the Office for National Statistics, showed that 262,000 people in England and Wales — approximately 0.5% of the adult population — responded "No" to the question of whether their gender identity matched their sex registered at birth (ONS, 2021). This is a significant population: roughly similar to the entire population of Tyneside, living among us, working, raising families, accessing healthcare, and paying taxes.

Scotland's equivalent census produced comparable per-capita figures. For the UK as a whole, a reasonable estimate is 300,000 to 500,000 adults who identify as trans or gender diverse in some form (estimates vary, but all converge on a figure well under 1%).

This matters for the argument that follows. When we discuss the risks trans people pose to society, we are discussing a minority of under half a million people. When we discuss the rights that should be afforded to them, we are discussing the terms on which a liberal democracy extends dignity and protection to a small, historically persecuted group. Size matters in moral calculus — not because small groups matter less, but because their vulnerability makes the majority's obligations greater, not smaller.

Kant and the Harm Principle

Kant's Categorical Imperative

Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative — "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law" (Kant, 1785) — demands that we treat persons never merely as means, but always also as ends in themselves. To use a group of people (who are vulnerable, often marginalized, frequently subject to violence) as a target for political point-scoring, is to treat them as means. This is a categorical moral failure.

Kant's second formulation holds that we have a duty to respect the rational agency of every person. When a trans person says "my gender identity is X," they are exercising the same rational self-determination that Kant argues is the foundation of moral personhood. To override that self-identification without compelling evidence of harm is to treat the rational agency of a trans person as subordinate to the preferences of strangers. Kant would not support this.

Mill's Harm Principle

John Stuart Mill's principle (articulated in On Liberty (1859)) states that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." This is not a permissive principle. It is a restriction on power. It says: you may not limit a person's liberty simply because you find their identity uncomfortable or because a majority dislikes it.' You may only limit liberty where there is demonstrable, specific harm to others.

Mill's principle places the burden of proof firmly on those who wish to restrict. If we are to deny trans people access to single-sex spaces, or to the legal recognition of their gender, or to healthcare, Mill demands that we demonstrate specific, evidenced harm that such access causes to others. Anecdote, speculation, ideological discomfort, and generalised fear are not sufficient grounds.

Is There Evidence of Harm?

Here the data are both limited and illuminating.

What the Official Data Actually Shows

The Ministry of Justice and the Office for National Statistics do not collect gender identity data on perpetrators of sexual violence. This was confirmed in Parliamentary written answers tabled in January 2026: in response to Questions HL13482 and HL13483 from Baroness Maclean (asking about convictions for rape and sexual offences where the perpetrator was trans), the Ministry's answer was explicit. The data does not exist (Ministry of Justice, 2026). No official dataset in Britain records the gender identity of sexual offenders.

This absence of data is, in itself, revealing. If trans people were responsible for a meaningful proportion of sexual violence, one might expect such a statistic to have entered the political bloodstream. It has not. What has entered the bloodstream is anecdote, panic, and manufactured controversy.

What We Do Know from Prison Data

The most comprehensive official data comes from the HMPPS Offender Equalities Annual Report 2024–25, published by the Ministry of Justice. As of 31 March 2025, there were 339 trans prisoners in England and Wales, out of a total prison population of approximately 87,000 (HMPPS, 2025). This is 0.39% of the prison population.

Given that trans adults represent approximately 0.5% of the general adult population (ONS, 2021), trans people are, if anything, slightly under-represented in the prison system. This is not the profile of a group posing a distinctive criminal threat.

The report does not break trans prisoners down by offence type, and mainstream MoJ conviction datasets do not include gender identity as a variable. The argument that trans people are a disproportionate threat in this area is simply not supported by the official record.

What About Children?

The most emotionally charged claim in this debate concerns the safety of children. Here, too, the data gap is complete. The Disclosure and Barring Service, the Ministry of Justice, the police, and the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse all confirm that gender identity of perpetrators is not recorded in any major national dataset relating to child sexual abuse (DBS, 2024; CSA Centre, 2025). There is no official evidence that trans people are disproportionately represented in child sexual abuse.

This matters. When policy is made on the basis of unevidenced fear — when, for example, the government moved in 2024 to restrict puberty blockers on the basis of the Cass Review, itself a contested piece of evidence-based medicine — it is not merely that the evidence is weak. The restriction itself causes demonstrable harm: to trans young people denied treatment, and to their families. Mill's principle demands that the harm of restriction be weighed against the harm of permissiveness. In the case of healthcare for trans youth, the scales do not clearly tip toward restriction.

The Swedish Study: What It Actually Found

The study most frequently cited by those who argue trans people are inherently more dangerous is Dhejne et al.'s (2011) longitudinal cohort study of 324 sex-reassigned persons in Sweden, published in PLoS ONE. The study did find elevated criminal conviction rates among trans people compared to the general population. However, its lead author, Cecilia Dhejne, has repeatedly and publicly stated that her findings have been systematically misrepresented by anti-trans advocates (Dhejne, 2017). The elevated rates were driven primarily by female-to-male trans people, reduced substantially when controlled for prior psychiatric morbidity, and reflect (as Dhejne herself has noted) the well-documented effects of social marginalisation, poverty, and discrimination rather than any inherent property of being trans. The study does not support the claim that transition causes increased criminality, and its senior author has said so, clearly, on the record.

A Divided Britain

The YouGov public opinion research, most recently in December 2024, shows a Britain that is genuinely split on the specifics of trans rights (YouGov, 2024). The headline figures are complex: 49% of Britons believe people should be able to socially identify as a different gender, but only 34% support legal gender recognition, and majorities oppose trans women in women's sports, healthcare for trans under-18s, and (significantly) access to single-sex spaces.

Yet there are two crucial qualifications. First, 32% of the population holds clearly permissive views across the board. A substantial minority. Second, and more importantly, personal familiarity with trans people is the single strongest predictor of permissive attitudes: those who know a trans person are significantly more supportive on every question asked (YouGov, 2024).

This is not trivial. It suggests that much of the opposition is a product of ignorance and media-fuelled fear rather than principled moral judgement. Kant would note that using anecdote and mediated image rather than direct encounter as the basis for policy towards a minority group is precisely the kind of instrumentalised thinking that his ethics seeks to prohibit.

The NatCen British Social Attitudes survey published in 2025 confirms that attitudes to gender recognition have become a new axis of political division in Britain. But this polarisation is recent, driven by media and political discourse, and is not the product of settled moral conviction (NatCen, 2025). Curtice's analysis that it now sits alongside economic left-right as a dividing line is accurate, but it is a dividing line that progressive politics must engage with, not retreat from.

The Moral Case Stands

The evidence, such as it is, does not support the claim that trans people are a harmful group within British society. The official data that does exist suggests they are, if anything, under-represented in the prison system. The data that anti-trans advocates claim exists (on sexual violence perpetration, on child abuse) does not exist in any official form. The most rigorous international study cited in this debate has been publicly repudiated by its own lead author.

Against this evidential vacuum, Kant's categorical imperative demands that we treat trans people as ends in themselves — as rational moral agents whose self-identification carries moral weight — not as objects of suspicion or fear. Mill's Harm Principle demands that any restriction of their rights be justified by specific, evidenced harm, not by anecdote, not by majority discomfort, and not by the political convenience of targeting a small and vulnerable minority.

A diverse society is not tested by how it treats majorities. It is tested by how it treats minorities. Those without the numbers to dominate elections, without the cultural leverage to set the terms of public debate, without the power to make their fear feel like universal common sense. Trans people in Britain in 2026 are such a minority. The moral case for their equality, dignity, and safety does not rest on opinion polls. It rests on the principle that persons are not to be used as means and that liberty may only be curtailed where harm to others is clearly demonstrated.

The evidence, such as it is, supports that case. The burden of proof remains firmly on those who would restrict.

References

Cass, H. (2024) Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People: Final Report. London: NHS England.

Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse (2025) Key Findings: Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales. London: CSA Centre.

Dhejne, C., Lichtenstein, P., Boman, M., Johansson, A.L.V., Långström, N. and Landén, M. (2011) 'Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden', PLoS ONE, 6(2), p.e16885.

Dhejne, C. (2017) 'Why the Swedish Study on Trans People and Criminality Is Often Misrepresented'. Available at: https://curtislibrery.uk (accessed 18 July 2026).

Disclosure and Barring Service (2024) Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24. London: DBS.

HMPPS (2025) HMPPS Offender Equalities Annual Report 2024/25. London: Ministry of Justice.

Kant, I. (1785/1998) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mill, J.S. (1859/1972) On Liberty. London: J.M. Dent.

Ministry of Justice (2026) Written Answers, House of Lords, 12 January 2026, Questions HL13482 and HL13483.

NatCen (2025) British Social Attitudes 42: Gender Identity. London: National Centre for Social Research.

ONS (2021) Gender Identity, England and Wales: Census 2021. Newport: Office for National Statistics.

ONS (2025) Sexual Offences Victim Characteristics, England and Wales: Year Ending March 2025. Newport: Office for National Statistics.

YouGov (2024) 'Where Does the British Public Stand on Transgender Rights in 2024/25?', December 2024. Available at: https://yougov.com (accessed 18 July 2026).

It is recommended that this piece be read as a companion to 'Why Facts Don't Change Minds'. and 'The Sanity of the Constituted Self', both available at this Blog. 18/7/2026