Pansexual population was hugely inflated in census by ‘faulty coding’

The Office for National Statistics has corrected the census after it mistakenly inflated Britain’s “pansexual” population by more than half.

The latest census in 2021 had claimed that 112,000 people in Britain identified as “pansexual”, where one is attracted to people of all genders.

But this was incorrect and it has since been changed to 48,000 people.

Officials blamed the blunder on “a coding mistake”, but critics said it brings the reliability of the entire census into question.

The gaffe centres on the “other sexual orientation” box which invited 165,000 open-ended responses from people who self-defined.

Initially, the ONS website reported that of those who selected “other sexual orientation, the most common write-in responses included: pansexual (112,000, 0.23 per cent), asexual (28,000, 0.06 per cent) [and] queer (15,000, 0.03 per cent). Another 10,000 (0.02 per cent) wrote in a different sexual orientation”.

This has now been corrected to read: “Pansexual (48,000, 0.10 per cent), asexual (28,000, 0.06 per cent), queer (15,000, 0.03 per cent). Another 75,000 (0.15 per cent) wrote in a different sexual orientation, or ticked the ‘other sexual orientation’ box but did not write anything in.”

Michael Biggs, associate professor of sociology at the University of Oxford, said: “This error raises further questions about the competence of the Office for National Statistics and the reliability of the 2021 census.

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