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Is there any link, for instance, between the proportion of homosexuals in a society and the level of crime? I mean, have you ever seen a fight in a gay bar, or heard of a gay burglar? Who knows what we might discover, if we only started to collect accurate information on the subject?There really is no reason any longer why the Census should not clearly and directly ask this question. Once you know that, there may be all sorts of other interesting questions waiting to be asked. Perhaps an influx of homosexuals acts in a similar way: it definitely seems to in some cases.These, however, remain merely anecdotal arguments, and even if proved, would present further questions. Does a homosexual society create prosperity, or do homosexuals gravitate towards prosperous societies? These questions, however, and the bigger one of whether there is such a thing as “the pink pound”, can hardly be answered in any convincing way if no one has any idea of the numbers of homosexuals involved. If you put a cinema in a middle-class neighbourhood, restaurants and bars will spring up nearby; it becomes a desirable place to live; shops open up, and everyone benefits.

You could quote examples which seem to prove the point: Manchester, with its busy gay population, is more prosperous than Liverpool or Sheffield, where the scene is much quieter and less visible.Certainly, some surprising factors can create substantial boosts in prosperity on a local level. More accurate figures of the people across the country who identify themselves as gay might prove to be much more than the food for idle curiosity. For instance, it is sometimes said that there is an indirect relationship between the number of gay people in any given area and its prosperity On an anecdotal level, that seems to have some truth in it. The upper reaches of the present list are noticeably more prosperous than the lower end. For instance, although the figures produced by the 2001 Census are obviously unreliable, the ranking of boroughs in order of their gay population seems, on an impressionistic level, to be roughly accurate.

You probably will find that there are more gay people living in Brighton than in Redcar; probably one could observe that by spending half an hour walking through their streets.It’s impossible, however, to do much with such very approximate information. I have a lot of difficulty seeing what use a government could make of the knowledge that 0.2 per cent of the population are Buddhists; it seems to me to fall into the information category of “Oh, fancy that – I never knew there were seven Jains in Kidderminster.”The question of sexual preference might prove to be rather more interesting than that, and well worth asking in a direct way. It also asks us to identify our religious belief, something which is surely just as private as our sexual preferences. For instance, it asks us how we regard our racial identity; a matter which is considered of considerable significance to all sorts of public policy concerns. The Census is not a psychological survey, but an examination of society. For these purposes, the question is not one of personal nature, but of social identity.

Better conclusions could be drawn from the answer to that question than from the present state of knowledge.The Census already inquires into all sorts of comparable questions. To know even the number of people who cheerfully describe themselves as homosexual or lesbian would be of great interest. An unknowable number still prefer to conceal the fact.Nevertheless, it seems to me that there are a very large number of people in this country who have no hesitation at all in identifying themselves as homosexual, and it is absurd for the Census to be squeamish on their behalf. Why doesn’t the next Census ask a direct question to its adult respondents: “How would you describe your sexual preference?” Of course, such a question would not produce an absolutely accurate figure of the number of homosexuals and lesbians in the country. So, the census will have excluded anyone who answered ambiguously – “friend” or perhaps even “partner” – and anyone who misunderstood the question and wrote “none”. Moreover, it doesn’t inquire into relationships, very common among gay people, where the partners live with each other part of the time, but retain their own houses.