Question

To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of including ethnic breakdowns in all national statistics.

Government departments are responsible for the production of different national statistics. I have asked my officials to liaise with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to ascertain the feasibility of including ethnic breakdowns in all national statistics.

A large amount of ethnicity data is already published on the Equality Hub’s Ethnicity Facts and Figures website. It was the first of its kind in terms of scale, scope and transparency and has been welcomed as best practice internationally. It contains statistics covering topics such as health, education, employment and the criminal justice system.

Publishing more ethnicity data for some topic areas may not always be possible. Ethnicity data may not be collected in some surveys or data collections. Where it is collected, data for some ethnic groups with smaller populations may not be published for reasons of disclosure or statistical reliability.