Your editorial does not recognise that for a number of years the government, Department of Health and others have shied away from providing clear guidance on sex and gender identity (“The failure to accurately record biological sex harms us all”, last week).
In 2021, the LGBT Foundation published a report, “If we’re not counted, we don’t count”, which included a recommendation that organisations asked people if their gender identity was the same as the sex they were assigned at birth. If this was recorded, organisations such as the NHS could still identify the sex of individuals, regardless of the gender they identify as. If people did not want that information shared they could elect to opt out, understanding it may put them at risk of missing out on screening programmes etc.
