Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether his Department has assessed the merits of updating the NHS data dictionary to include the 2011 census ethnic group classification, which includes gypsy or Irish traveller.

The NHS Equality and Diversity Council has an agenda to look at Data supporting equalities monitoring on the Equality Act 2010 ‘protected characteristics’, of which Ethnicity is one. A decision is pending on whether to adopt the Ethnicity values from the 2011 census within the National Health Service; currently the NHS standard is to use the 2001 values, which do not include gypsy or Irish traveller. Until this decision is made, and a change to existing data standards is brought through the Standardisation Committee for Care Information process, the NHS Data Dictionary values cannot be updated.