Census (Return Particulars and Removal Of Penalties) Bill [Lords]

[Dame Eleanor Laing in the Chair]

Clause 1

Amendment of the Census Act 1920

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

With this it will be convenient to discuss clauses 2 and 3.

I will not prolong this part of our debate. The purpose of the clause is simple. It amends the Census Act 1920 in respect of England and Wales to remove the penalty for not responding to census questions on sexual orientation and gender identity. This means that those questions will be voluntary. As I am sure hon. Members will recall, this reflects the approach taken by the Census (Amendment) Act 2000, which removed the penalty attaching to a failure to answer a question on religion in the census.

Clause 2 amends the Census Act (Northern Ireland) 1969 to remove the penalty for not responding to census questions on sexual orientation and gender identity, in order to replicate the changes that we are making in law for England and Wales. The power to include questions on sexual orientation and gender identity already exists under the Northern Ireland legislation. Clause 2 does not create new powers to ask those questions; it simply ensures that if they were asked in a future census in Northern Ireland, they would be voluntary.

Finally, clause 3 sets out the territorial extent, commencement and short title of the Bill. The territorial extent of the Bill is England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Bill does not extend to Scotland, where the matter is devolved and where the Scottish Parliament is dealing with the relevant legislation.

New Clause 2

Questions on gender identity

“(1) Any question or questions asked about gender identity under the Census Act 1920 or the Census Act (Northern Ireland) 1969 must be framed so as to enable statistical information to be obtained about gender identity within different ethnic groups.

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment (a) to new clause 2, at end insert “, Jains and Zoroastrians”.

Amendment (b) to new clause 2, at end insert “and Kashmiris”.

New clause 3—Homeless people and questions on gender identity and sexual orientation—

“(1) The Secretary of State must make a statement to both Houses of Parliament on what steps the Office for National Statistics will take to ensure that people who are homeless have an opportunity to answer any questions about gender identity or sexual orientation under the Census Act 1920 or the Census Act (Northern Ireland) 1969.

(2) The statement in subsection (1) must be made within two months of the passing of this Act.

(3) In this section, “homeless” is defined as set out in section 175 of the Housing Act 1996.”

Sikhs are being discriminated against. This new clause tabled in my name and those of other right hon. and hon. Members would mean that if the census included a question on gender identity, it would have to be written in such a way as to provide information about gender identity in different ethnic groups.

Discrimination exists in different ways within different communities and the only way to successfully understand the outcomes and the reasons behind discrepancies as well as to provide services is to look at intersectional areas, including the breakdown of gender within different ethnic groups. At the national and local level, public bodies including schools, hospitals, police forces, local authorities and central Government Departments only use ethnic group categories specified in the census to collect data for public service planning and decision making. I want to make it clear that contrary to what the Government have stated, public bodies do not use the religion category to provide public services. That is an important point. In total, there are 40,000 public bodies across the country. This amendment will allow the underestimation of Sikh numbers and inadequate allocation of resources to Sikhs based on current census statistics to be overturned.

According to the Women and Equalities Committee, the quality and depth of data on ethnicity collected by Departments varies widely, which is hindering efforts to tackle racial discrimination in public services. As a result of not being monitored as an ethnic group, Sikhs of all genders are left out of the equation in policy decisions. The Government have stated that the option to tick “other” and write in Sikh as an ethnicity in the census is adequate, knowing full well that public bodies ignore the “other” option and that this will do nothing to counter discrimination against Sikhs in their own right.

I thank the hon. Lady for tabling this new clause, and as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief, in which the Sikhs are a stakeholder, I think that her point is very important. I support wholeheartedly what she says and I think that the Government need to be responsive to a changing society in which Sikhs are playing an important, crucial and critical role. I therefore urge the Government to support the new clause.

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has taken on board the issue of ending discrimination, because that is exactly what this new clause does, and that he fully backs it. As legislators, we should uphold the law and, given that Sikhs are already classed as an ethnicity in legislation, we should end this kind of discrimination—that is what we are here to do.

My hon. Friend knows that my name is among the six at the top of this new clause. She will know that the Sikh community is very concerned to have this level of recognition, and that there are many people who have been pressing for many years for the resolution of this issue and for a box on the census that Sikhs can tick. Does she not agree that it is time this matter was dealt with seriously by the Government?

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and he is absolutely right. There has been cross-party support. This campaign commenced in 2001 and has had immense support in favour of addressing the discrimination Sikhs have faced in this country because of the fact that they are not counted and that, as a result, public bodies do not recognise that they need to provide services.

The relevance of the new clause and the importance of gender equality in the Sikh community date back to Guru Nanak Dev Ji, whose 550th birthday we are celebrating this year. He promoted fairness and gender equality and denounced discrimination of the sexes. My new clause would allow us, as parliamentarians, to do what we are elected to do and to challenge inequalities and unfairness. It would enable us to understand the obstacles facing the Sikh community in greater detail and to ensure that every public body knows what it is supposed to be doing and what impact it is having.

For example, data obtained by Housing Justice showed that more than 5% of those experiencing homelessness in London who died outdoors in the last 12 months were male Sikhs. That is disproportionate compared with the Sikh population, which is only 1.5% of the population in London. In April, when I asked the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government what steps the Ministry was taking to determine how many homeless people are Sikh, I simply got a response explaining that it had no current plans to collect that information.