Anti-transgender views have been classed as “misinformation” in a government-commissioned report.
The study urges the Government to use psychology to prevent the spread of narratives it views as potentially “misleading”.
The tactics are recommended for use in schools and public communications to stop “false” ideas taking hold in society.
The 136-page report, by a group of seven academics and commissioned by the Government Office for Science, categorises “anti-LGBTQ+ narratives” as a type of “false and misleading information” seen in the UK.
But the Conservatives, urging Andy Burnham to condemn the document, have likened its proposals to the activities of the Thought Police in George Orwell’s 1984, and called it an “outrageous attack on our rights”.
The Government insisted … that the report was “independent” and did not represent official policy.
Related on the SLP
The study, from May 2026, was designed to inform government policy on “identifying and tackling harmful misinformation”.
It uses data compiled by EU-funded fact-checkers to identify 11 key categories of “false and misleading information”, backed up by a list of examples.
One of the categories included is defined as “anti-LGBTQ+ narratives, ‘gender ideology’ claims targeting schools and public institutions, Pride event misrepresentation and transgender athlete controversies”.
