Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate he has made of the number of Black and ethnic minority staff employed in his Department.

The Department published the report ‘Equality in 2020: how DHSC met the public sector equality duty’ on 24 June. This includes the most recent statistics published on the number of black and ethnic minority staff employed in the Department. The report shows that 43.1% of staff declared their ethnicity. The data on number of staff is rounded to the nearest five to maintain anonymity. In September 2020, the Department employed 2,435 members of staff. Of these, 210 identify as black or ethnic minority, 840 as white and 1,385 are undeclared.

We are committed to achieving a representative workforce and providing equality of opportunity. We monitor protected characteristics across the Department, although declaration of ethnicity is voluntary.