The census question of whether you are male or female is considered ‘irrelevant, unacceptable and intrusive’

The UK is to become one of the first countries in the world not to require its citizens to let officialdom know what sex they are.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is proposing to make the sex question in the next census voluntary, after protests that it discriminates against transgender and other non-binary people.

The change will leave Britain without an accurate figure for the number of men and women living in the country.

Four million people declined to answer the only voluntary question in the last census: “What is your religion?”

The proposal was greeted with horror last night by some feminists, who see it as part of a growing trend to remove all mention of the biological female sex.

Germaine Greer, the