Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they conduct ethnic monitoring of social security benefits, including Universal Credit; and if so, whether this system collects data on the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.

Claimants, including Universal Credit claimants, are given the option to provide their ethnicity for monitoring purposes. We have published volumes of claimants broken down by ethnicity for some benefits. This is publically available and can be accessed using DWP’s Stat-Xplore function on the gov.uk website, or the Nomis service provided by the Office for National Statistics.

The data is not broken down to Gypsy, Roma and Travellers. These individuals are captured in the larger ethnic group they identify with.