Four years ago, on 7 June 2021, we lodged a petition with the Scottish Parliament, asking it to make sure that Police Scotland always records the sex of rape suspects accurately. Weeks earlier, the force had told us that for rape or attempted rape “a male who self-identifies as a woman would be expected to be recorded as a female on relevant police systems.”

By early July, our petition had collected 12,000 signatures, an unusually high number at Holyrood at the time.

Astonishingly, this turned out only to be the start of a four-year story of institutional chaos and inaction. Police Scotland’s position proved to be a moving target. Meanwhile, although the Parliament’s Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee agreed to open an inquiry, it has yet to call the force as a witness.

The arguments here are not difficult to understand, nor should they be controversial. Rape is an indisputably male crime.

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A policy that prioritises the feelings of men charged with rape over their predominantly female victims is inexcusably offensive and damaging to women. Recording one thing in place of another, such as self-declared identity instead of sex, messes up statistics, and not just for rape.

Police Scotland’s first written response to the Committee, in 2021, said that “a woman may be recorded… where a person, born male and who identifies as a........

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