That this House has considered Sikh and Jewish ethnicity data collection by public bodies.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts. I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister to her role. For more than 40 years, Sikhs and Jews have been recognised in law as both ethnic and religious groups. That is long-established; it was confirmed by the 1983 Mandla v. Dowell-Lee judgment and reaffirmed by the Equality Act 2010. Yet, in practice, our systems still fail to acknowledge what the law clearly states.
Nearly six decades after racial discrimination laws were introduced, public bodies still do not collect ethnicity data on Sikhs and Jews. This is not a technical oversight; it is a structural problem with the way public bodies and our Government collect ethnicity data—one that prevents us from understanding inequality, recognising discrimination and properly protecting communities the law says we must protect.
In December 2024, I introduced my ten-minute rule Bill, the Public Body Ethnicity Data (Inclusion of Jewish and Sikh Categories) Bill. The Bill provides that where a public body collects data about ethnicity for the purpose of delivering public services, it must include specific Sikh and Jewish categories as options for a person’s ethnic group. This is about how the United Kingdom delivers its public services; it is not a theological discussion, as the Office for National Statistics has told all public bodies that they can use only—this is really important—the current ethnicity data categories for service delivery.
Time and again, national reviews have shown that Sikhs and Jews are missing from the datasets that shape decisions about public services. In 2018, the Women and Equalities Committee heard that the Government’s race disparity audit had identified around 340 datasets across Government, yet not one included data on Sikhs. My own written parliamentary questions have revealed that Government Departments do not collect ethnicity data on Sikhs and Jews.
I commend the hon. Lady on all that she does on behalf of the Sikh community. I am very happy that we have developed a friendship over the years through freedom of religious belief and that we are able to stand together for each other, and that is something that always encourages me.
Does the hon. Lady agree that although Sikh and Jewish people are legally recognised as ethnic groups under the Equality Act 2010, current public data collection often reduces them solely to a religion, which is wrong? Does she agree that Jewish and Sikh people, and other minority communities, face both subtle and overt forms of discrimination, and that it is therefore imperative that public bodies collect accurate ethnicity data? That would send a clear message that Sikh and Jewish people, and others, are valued, visible and protected in every part of this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The hon. Gentleman makes a really important point, and I will come on to why this is important in practice. We are both legislators in this House, and he is right: we both take our responsibilities very seriously and want to see all communities treated fairly under the law, so we must implement it. I really value his intervention and thank him for it.
As I said, my own written parliamentary questions have revealed that Government Departments do not collect ethnicity data on Sikhs and Jews. As the hon. Member has just said, the only information collected is religious data, but religious data is inconsistent and incomplete, and is rarely used in designing or delivering services. It also excludes people who are ethnically Sikh or Jewish but do not practise their faiths. User need has been clearly evidenced by the plethora of evidence available, and that simply cannot be ignored by the ONS.
I congratulate the hon. Member on securing the debate. My constituent Dan has written to me to express his strong support for Sikhs and Jews being able to identify as an ethnic group. He is Jewish, but not religious, and says it is important for him to be able to register as belonging to a group not currently permitted under the census data. Does the hon. Member agree that Jews and Sikhs do face discrimination, whether they are religious or not, and that it is important for their identity and the delivery of public services to be able to identify their ethnicity?
Absolutely; I think that is really important. I have a staffer who, equally, is Jewish and does not feel that he is religious, and he wants the option to tick his ethnicity because, as he says, “I am Jewish.” This is simply giving people the option; no one is forcing anyone to tick any other box—they can tick any box they think reflects their ethnicity. But given the Equality Act, and given race hate and the rise in antisemitism, we absolutely should be collecting ethnicity data. My staffer should not be invisible.
I wish to make a medical point. Considering the clear evidence for the genetic propensity of Jews to develop certain medical conditions and diseases, is it not right that, in terms of data, the NHS and the Department of Health and Social Care treat Jews as both a religious and an ethnic group?
My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I really value his expertise in this House. Health inequalities are an area where we really see this issue being played out. The NHS is doing some directed work with the Jewish community; I know that, because it is happening in my constituency. That is because many Jewish women of Ashkenazi descent are predisposed to breast cancer, for example, and I can give lots of similar examples about the Sikh community. That is why we must consider the real-life experiences of those in our communities—they are not only invisible, but the health inequalities they face are not being addressed, as a result of the situation we find ourselves in.
I am proud to represent a very large Sikh community in Sandwell, which is near my hon. Friend’s constituency. What she campaigns for—for ethnicity data about the Sikh community to be recorded—is really important for organisations such as the NHS as well as for Home Office data and crime data. We have suffered some very serious anti-Sikh hate crime in West Bromwich recently, which the community is very upset about, and I am standing with them against it. Can she say more about how recording this data will help not just NHS and health data, but other types of public data?
My hon. Friend does some fantastic work locally with her communities, and I know that she supports this campaign and really understands the real-life impact it has. She talked about anti-Sikh hate. We have seen a rise in hate crime across communities, but it is especially marked in the latest Home Office data. The data shows that there has been an increase of 20% in religious hate against the Sikh community. I will go on to say a bit more about how hate crime is recorded for both the Jewish community and the Sikh community.
When public bodies do not count a community, that community is invisible. That is clearly the case for Jews and Sikhs. My Bill addresses that gap. It would give Jews and Sikhs the simple and fair recognition that the law already promises. As legislators, it is our duty to ensure that the law is upheld and implemented. It is not optional for arm’s length bodies or Government Departments; the law is the law.
Covid-19 showed us what is at stake when communities are not counted. When the ONS belatedly analysed covid outcomes by religious group, it revealed that Sikhs had died at disproportionately high rates, even adjusting for deprivation, region and other socioeconomic factors. Critically, Sikhs were affected differently from other south Asian groups, proving that the existing ethnic categories failed to capture the reality, and for the Jewish community, the death rate was almost twice the rate of the general population. If we are serious about tackling health inequalities, we must be serious about collecting accurate data. After all, it is about life and death. If the evidence from this work is not compelling enough for the ONS, then I really do not know what will be.
As my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes) stated, we have recently seen horrific incidents of anti-Sikh hate crime in the west midlands. There have been two separate racially aggravated rapes of Sikh women, including one just outside my constituency, and a brutal physical attack on two Sikh taxi drivers. Of the 115,990 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales between April 2024 and March 2025, 71% were recorded as being “racially aggravated”. Yet despite the Home Office requiring police forces to provide the ethnicity of victims since April 2021, we only know the ethnicity of victims in 40% of offences, and within that 40%, Sikh and Jewish categories are not offered. So the racially aggravated rapes that those two Sikh women were subjected to were not recorded as anti-Sikh hate crimes.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) for tabling this important debate, and I thank other Members for joining us. Over many years my hon. Friend has championed the rights of Sikh and Jewish communities. Those communities contribute so much to British life, and both our families are great examples of that.
The science of statistics helps us to understand the world and our place in it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Edgbaston has made clear, that is particularly the case for minority groups, who so often feel unseen and unheard by their Government. We should always strive to identify data gaps that need addressing. The issues raised today regarding Sikh and Jewish data, and the impact of data gaps relating to those groups, could not be more relevant or timely. As we speak, these topics are under active consideration by the Government Statistical Service as part of its review of the harmonisation of ethnicity standards. That is a critical process. I know that my hon. Friend and I will follow its progress closely and look forward to reading its findings when they are published in the autumn.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Edgbaston eloquently set out the impact of the current data gaps regarding Sikh and Jewish communities. As she mentioned, those became particularly apparent during covid and in administering other public services. That is at the heart of this debate, and the Government are committed to serving all our minority communities. My hon. Friend and other Members can be reassured that, as part of the review, the ONS has committed to looking at adding more ethnicity tick boxes, including options for Sikhs and Jews.
As my hon. Friend is aware, as part of the review the ONS held an open consultation between October 2025 and February 2026. The general public and all Government Departments, including the Government Statistical Service, were invited to respond to the consultation. The heads of profession for statistics in every Department were contacted on the day the consultation launched and again in January, a month before it closed. The ONS has committed to publishing all the submissions it received in April. I have personally asked the ONS to contact my hon. Friend directly when the information is available, as she has raised concerns about when that will happen.
Can I seek clarity from the Minister? All the correspondence I have had from the Home Office says that it has been told to use existing categories in the census, according to the ONS, and that is why it does not collect the data.
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important topic, and for her ongoing hard work advocating for the Sikh and Jewish communities. I am keen to emphasise that whether Sikh and Jewish ethnicity tick boxes should be introduced is an open question. I reassure my hon. Friend that a clear and credible procedure is in place to make an informed decision. The Government should not and will not pre-empt the ONS’s ongoing, independent and impartial piece of work. That means we all eagerly await the publication of the Government Statistical Service’s findings this autumn, at which point I anticipate that she and I will be in regular contact about the next steps, based on the ONS’s findings.
Question put and agreed to.
As I said earlier, of the 9% of hate crimes that were recorded as being religiously aggravated, Home Office data shows a 20% increase in crimes specifically targeting Sikhs. Are we saying that Jewish and Sikh victims do not matter? I think that is a reasonable question for both communities to ask.
The Jewish community continues to face horrific abuse, having the highest rate of religious hate crime of any group. The terrorist attack at Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester was an awful reminder that there is still much more to be done to fight antisemitism and keep British Jews safe.
The lack of accurate data collection for the offence of racially aggravated hate crime is hiding the true severity of anti-Sikh and anti-Jewish hate crime, which means that the police and the Government cannot put proper targeted protections in place. The Sikh community is asking the Government, the Home Office and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government why they are not recognising and recording anti-Sikh hate crimes. What are they saying to that? That it is because the ONS asks them to only use the existing ethnic categories.
The ONS does not seem to understand that Jews and Sikhs face racial hatred, which is distinct from religious hatred. How are we meant to track and combat this religious hatred without data? Why does the Minister think the ONS is treating Sikh and Jewish communities in this way, given the levels of hate that they have recently faced and the decades they have spent campaigning for fairness and equality?
After many meetings and much correspondence from me over the past eight years, the ONS has acknowledged that ethnicity standards must reflect the United Kingdom’s diversity. The Government Statistical Service, led by the ONS, recently consulted on additional categories for the ethnicity harmonised standard, but the criteria for the evaluation of the responses, which were published last week, leave me apprehensive. Despite assurances to the contrary, I was disappointed that the criteria were almost identical to those used to decide the categories for the last census, in 2021, in which Sikhs and Jews were in the last four groups to be considered from a list of 55. Those should not be treated as the same exercise. The harmonisation standard is primarily intended to assist public bodies to meet their equalities responsibility—I say that again: to meet their equalities responsibility—and best serve all Britain’s diverse communities. The purpose of the census is, of course, much broader.
With that in mind, I was struck by the lack of any legal test. Sikhs and Jews have been legally recognised as ethnicities for decades. We know that religion data is not used by public bodies that implement this standard. In fact, the ONS knows this, and has publicly acknowledged it. Surely the GSS, led by the ONS, needs to consider the bigger picture and form a harmonised standard with its implementation in mind. If Sikhs and Jews are legally protected ethnicities, public bodies have a legal duty to monitor their outcomes and deliver services to address inequality. The GSS should want to develop a harmonised standard that allows public bodies to meet their legal obligations.
The ONS has claimed in meetings that there are apparently hundreds of potential ethnicities that could be included, but in the landmark 1983 case Mandla v. Dowell-Lee, the Law Lords made life easier by establishing crucial criteria for defining an ethnic group. The Minister should signal to the GSS that, as legislators, we expect the starting point of its considerations to be legally recognised ethnic groups such as Sikhs and Jews, given the protections in the Equality Act 2010.
The second criterion—assessing whether there is a lack of alternative sources of information for the group—similarly demonstrates the ONS’s short-sightedness. Although many Sikhs may choose to record their religion as Sikh, the ONS knows that the question is optional, is not used to inform policymaking or service delivery, and is irrelevant to the execution of ethnicity equalities duties.
Finally, the subjective “acceptability” criterion does not give me faith that the ONS has learned any lessons from past oversights. In the run-up to the 2021 census, the ONS pushed aside calls for a Sikh ethnicity tick box, citing divisions in the community—an argument that I am disappointed has been repeated since. I remind the House and the ONS that nearly 100,000 Sikhs and 65,000 Jews ticked “other” and wrote in their ethnicity in the census. That is hugely significant, because this huge number of respondents from the two communities is far bigger than the number of responses to any consultation, focus group or exercise that the ONS may choose to carry out.
Citizens want democracy to work for them, so that they can have trust in our political system. That is our duty as legislators. I am therefore keen to understand what the Government are saying to the 165,000 Jews and Sikhs who clearly sent a message to the ONS and Government that they want the option to tick “Jewish” or “Sikh”.
I am not advocating or forcing anyone to identify in a certain way. Respondents would still be able to record their ethnicity as they choose, as would any person from any background. The question is whether the GSS and ONS give greater weight to established legal precedent or a few dissenting voices in a focus group.
That brings me to the relationship between the Government, the ONS and Parliament more broadly. In a recent meeting, the ONS made it clear that it expects the Government to tell it their data needs, yet in all my correspondence on this issue over past years, Ministers have responded by stating that they are relying on the GSS and ONS. Let me be clear: it is right that our country’s official statistics are independent of Government. However, at some point the relationship has shifted, and we have lost our way. The Government should obviously not be able to write their own scorecard, but that does not mean that Government Departments should not engage proactively with the ONS to outline what frameworks they need to best serve the British public.
I tabled questions to every Department asking whether they fed into the consultation on the harmonised standard. The responses I have gotten back have been hugely disappointing. Many Departments dodged the question, telling me to wait for the ONS’s response to the consultation later this year to see whether Departments fed in. How does that give Jewish and Sikh communities any faith that, while they are dying disproportionately, we in this House are committed to addressing that inequality? It is a simple question. This is about transparency.
I am grateful that the Home Office confirmed that it provided an organisational response. The relationship between the Government and the ONS should be reciprocal. These Departments hold the data, but many of them say that there is no data. They deliver services that are not directed at these groups, so they should be working with the ONS to push for better data that ensures that they can meet their legal equalities duties.
The ONS is funded by the taxpayer and consists of civil servants. Civil servants must deliver for the public. In January, I tabled a question on ethnicity pay gap reporting and received an interesting response. The Minister who responded, my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), stated that the recent consultation on ethnicity and disability pay-gap reporting considered whether ethnicity data should be collected following the GSS and ONS current harmonised standard, which does not include specific “Sikh” and “Jewish” categories. Will the Minister outline what provisions would be available for Jews and Sikhs to challenge ethnicity pay gap reporting if they are not included? This also demonstrates that some Departments recognise that they are not required to follow the GSS framework. I gently encourage Ministers across Government to consider whether the GSS harmonised standard is adequate for them to meet the equalities duties.
To conclude, this campaign has the support a broad coalition: the Board of Deputies, the Community Security Trust, the Antisemitism Policy Trust, the Sikh Federation, the Sikh Council UK, the UK Gurdwara Alliance, many health professionals, local police and local government. Those organisations understand the lived reality of their communities. They see the consequences of missing data every single day in healthcare, public safety, education, housing and employment.
In June last year, Birmingham city council became the first local authority in England to include Sikh and Jewish ethnic categories when collecting data and delivering services. I am grateful to the Birmingham Labour group for its leadership on this issue, but will it really take every council in the country passing its own motion for Sikhs and Jews to be counted? What we are asking for is simple: fairness. For more than 40 years, Sikhs and Jews have been recognised as ethnic groups in law. It is time for public bodies to recognise them in practice and for legislators to implement the law.
Additionally, as part of the consultation process, the ONS engaged with key leaders in the Jewish and Sikh communities, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Health and Care Jewish Staff Network, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, the Jewish Association for Mental Illness, the Sikh Federation UK and the Supreme Sikh Council UK. Now that the consultation has closed, the submissions are being analysed.
Last week, the Government Statistical Service published the evaluation criteria for assessing the proposed new tick-box response options. The three headline criteria are the strength of user need, the lack of alternative sources, and acceptability, clarity and data quality. I hear my hon. Friend’s concerns about these being the same as before. I have spoken directly with the chair of the UK Statistics Authority and the permanent secretary of the ONS on the specific matter of Sikh and Jewish ethnicity tick boxes, and I have been assured that this will be considered as part of the review. I have further been assured—and I am confident of this—that at this stage the option to add tick boxes for Sikhs and Jews as ethnic groups is an open question and that the ONS will reach an impartial, evidence-based decision.
My hon. Friend mentioned the ethnicity pay gap, which I am happy to take away.
On the issue of legality, the Equality Act 2010 and the public sector equality duty are key components of the Government Statistical Service review, and the user need for data to support equality monitoring for protected characteristic features predominantly in the evaluation criteria. Under the Equality Act, race is defined to include colour, nationality, and ethnic or national origins. That means that, under the Act, Sikhs and Jews are a racial group by reference to their ethnic origins. Both are also religious groups under the Act. Let me be clear: the Government, the ONS and the Government Statistical Service all recognise that, as my hon. Friend highlighted, Sikh identity and Jewish identity are ethnic as well as religious identities.
It is important to clarify that the Act does not specify particular ethnicities as being protected. Apart from anything else, that would mean that we live in a country that has unprotected ethnic groups. I am sure my hon. Friend would join me in agreeing that that would be completely unacceptable. In fact, the Equality Act provides protection to everybody on the basis of their ethnicity, and of their religion or lack of religion. The Act protects all ethnicities, not some over others.
However, protection under the Act does not legally mandate the inclusion of a tick-box option for data collection purposes. Indeed, there are many other ethnicities—hundreds, in fact—all of which are recognised by the Government, that also do not have a tick box, such as Kurdish, Persian and Hispanic/Latino. Because there are so many ethnic groups that do not have their own tick box, individuals are given the option to write their ethnicity. In the 2021 census, 287 different ethnicities were recorded and published. Tick-box response options in the survey form simply cannot include all the ethnic groups, which is why the tick-box option should never be seen as a list of official or recognised ethnicities.
As I have set out, decisions on tick boxes involve a number of factors, including user need for the data, data quality, public acceptability, clarity for respondents, and the impact on comparability of data over time. I hear what my hon. Friend said about the need and the possible gaps, which is why the ONS is analysing and considering this issue as part of its review. It will publish it findings in the autumn, which she, I and other Members keenly await—alongside many in the Jewish and Sikh communities, as she mentioned—and we will go from there.
I thank my hon. Friend and other Members for raising the important issue of hate crime. We are united in our determination to tackle these abhorrent crimes in the UK. Everyone in this country deserves to feel safe and live their lives free from violence. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Edgbaston will know that the UK Government Statistical Service is decentralised. How hate crimes are recorded is determined by the police, not the ONS. It is something I strongly encourage her to raise directly with the Home Office, as I know she already is.