Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the number of additional children beyond the annual average who have lost a parent since the beginning of the covid-19 outbreak.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority. I have, therefore, asked the Authority to respond.

Professor Sir Ian Diamond | National Statistician

Charlotte Nichols MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

20 October 2021

Dear Ms Nichols,

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what assessment has been made of the number of additional children beyond the annual average who have lost a parent since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (57430).

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes mortality statistics for England and Wales, compiled from information supplied when deaths are certified and registered as part of civil registration. Death registration figures for Northern Ireland and Scotland are available from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency¹ and National Records of Scotland², respectively.

An ONS report on ‘Excess mortality and mortality displacement in England and Wales: 2020 to mid-2021³ showed that between 28 December 2019 and 2 July 2021, the number of deaths registered was 97,981 more than the five-year average for a similar calendar period, an excess of 11.9%.

The information collected at death registration does not include the number of children to whom the deceased was a parent. While family structure is recorded at the decennial census and could in principle throw some light on this question, information from the 2011 Census would be insufficient since it does not include children born since the 2011 census day, and corresponding data from the 2021 Census are not yet available.

It is therefore not possible at present to make any reliable estimate of the number or proportion of people who died who were parents, or of the number of children who sadly lost a parent.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Sir Ian Diamond

1https://www.nisra.gov.uk/statistics/births-deaths-and-marriages/deaths
2https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/statistics/statistics-by-theme/vital-events/deaths
3https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/excessmortalityandmortalitydisplacementinenglandandwales/2020tomid2021