Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential benefits of the adoption by the police of ethnic category codes currently defined in the 2011 census in respect of the Roma, Gypsy and Traveller population as part of their collection of data in accordance with Section 95 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991.

The Census categories for ethnicity are assessed each year as part of the Home Office’s process of agreeing each year’s Annual Data Requirement (ADR) of mandatory collections of statistical data from the police. This process
includes consultation with stakeholders of the Ministry of Justice biennial release Race and the Criminal Justice System, produced in accordance with section 95 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991.

The ADR collections currently use the Census 2001 ethnicity framework, and there are no plans at present to move to the Census 2011 framework, which would add a separate category of ‘Gypsy or Irish Traveller’