Census

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 6th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

I beg to move,

That items 2 (resident particulars), 5, 6 (visitor particulars), 10, 11, 13, 16, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24 (demographic particulars), 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, 36(d) (education and employment particulars), 41, 42, 43 (accommodation particulars), 45, 46 (additional particulars for individual returns) in Schedule 2, and items 1, 2, 3 and 4 in Schedule 3 to the draft Census (England and Wales) Order 2020, which was laid before this House on 2 March, be approved.

It is a pleasure to join you for my first time in the Chamber under these hybrid arrangements, Mr Speaker.

The draft Order in Council was laid before both Houses on 2 March, under the provisions of the Census Act 1920. It provides for the 22nd census of England and Wales to take place on 21 March next year. It prescribes the date of the census, the people to be counted, the people responsible for making a census return and the information to be given in those returns. The draft order gives effect to the recommendations of the UK Statistics Authority and its executive arm, the Office for National Statistics, as set out in its December 2018 White Paper.

The primary aim of the census is to provide accurate data on the population, so the information that it provides includes people’s characteristics, education, religion, ethnicity, working life and health. It gives decision makers in national and local government, as well as in community groups, charities and businesses, the opportunity to better serve communities and individuals in the UK. It enables a wide range of services and future planning to be supported.

The statutory instrument before us today is unusual, with a mixed procedure. It is principally subject to the draft negative procedure, but under the terms of the 1920 Act, some questions—those printed in italics in the draft order—may be included in the census only if they are approved by an affirmative resolution of both Houses. It is with those elements of the order that the motion before us is concerned. They include questions on health, education and national identity. If the House wishes to debate the census more broadly, I would of course be happy to try to answer hon. Members’ questions, but would emphasise that the scope of the motion is somewhat narrow.

The draft order is the first stage of the secondary legislation necessary for a census to be held. The order covers England and Wales. Subject to the approval of this Order in Council, the Government will bring forward census regulations for England, which will set out the final questions and govern much of the operation of the census. Those regulations will describe the content and functionality of the online forms for this, the first predominantly online census. It will also contain copies of the corresponding paper questionnaires. Separate regulations for the census in Wales will be laid before the Welsh Parliament by the Welsh Government. Hon. and right hon. Members will be aware that the census order for Scotland has already been approved by the Scottish Parliament, and the census order for Northern Ireland has been laid before the Northern Ireland Assembly. Together, these three statutory instruments allow for the 2021 census to take place on the same date across the United Kingdom.

Let me turn to the proposals for the census. The ONS’s work has been informed by extensive consultation, research and engagement. The majority of questions will stay the same as in 2011 to ensure comparability of data between censuses. New questions or response options are only included after research and consultation that provide compelling evidence for their inclusion. For 2021, there will be new questions on past service in the armed forces, and new voluntary questions on sexual orientation and gender identity.

As I have mentioned briefly already, the 2021 census will be predominantly online, making it easier for people to take part when and how they want. Of course, help —including language support and paper forms—will be available for those who need it. Nobody will be missed out and everybody can identify as they wish. This will ensure that the 2021 census reflects the society we live in today, and that will enable national and local government, community groups, charities and businesses to better serve communities and individuals across the country.

Our aim is for the census to be the most inclusive ever, so the ONS will work with local groups and organisations across the country to raise awareness of the census, to promote the different response options and the new search-as-you-type functionality, and to support people in completing the census online or on paper. To be successful in its aims, the census relies on the willing support and participation of the public, on whose behalf the information is collected. With hon. Members’ help and support to promote awareness of the census and its benefits in all our communities, the ONS can ensure that the ’21 census provides reliable data that benefits all our constituents.

The census is unique in the insights that it provides into our nation and the data it provides to support policy making nationally and locally. Data from the census can inform a wide range of planning decisions, including on school places, hospital beds, GP and dental services, where to build houses and roads, and businesses’ decisions on where and in what to invest. The census provides us with the opportunity to build a detailed and comprehensive picture of the nation.

At this point I will mention, as I am sure this will come up in the debate, that social distancing measures have of course meant that some national events have been postponed or cancelled. The 2021 census, which will be primarily online, is still nearly a year away, and the ONS is working to deliver it as planned, but we will continue to assess the situation and any implications for the census, including appropriate contingency measures, should they be needed.

Community engagement will very much go ahead and onwards from now, including with local government in all our areas, to help ensure that everybody can take part. To this end, dedicated staff on the ground will have a particular focus on hard-to-reach communities, which I know will be welcome to all Members. I commend the draft order to the House, and look forward to our debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chloe Smith]

You will appreciate, Madam Deputy Speaker, that as I have so many answers to give I must ensure that I have all my papers in front of me.  I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part in today’s debate for what was a thoughtful and helpful consideration of all the issues that pertain to the running of an exercise of this scale. I sympathise with the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), who said that, as a younger version of himself, he marvelled at the scale of the census exercise. We can all appreciate that.

Let me turn to some of the questions raised by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), who spoke for the Labour party. She asked some questions about the Gender Recognition Act; I can confirm that the consultation response from the Government will be forthcoming before the summer recess. She also asked whether specialist LGBT support would flow from the census results; I assure her that the Government will look carefully at that. Furthermore, she asked whether there might be a support plan for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities following the data that we hope to collect from the census. I refer her to the plans announced last year by the noble Lord Bourne, who was then the Minister responsible in the Lords—which is to say that yes, we do intend to look at where greater support can be given.

Let me turn to the points that were raised about Sikh ethnicity—I shall then go on to discuss Cornish national identity and other points that I hope to be able to tick off for Members. On the point about Sikh ethnic identity, I reassure Members that in no way is either the ONS or the Government ignoring a community, tolerating discrimination or—to address some of the remarks made today—ignoring the possibility of there being a greater impact of covid-19 on black, Asian and minority ethnic groups. It would be very grave if the Government or the ONS were doing any of those things, and we are not doing them.

I recognise the passion with which people have spoken on this issue, including the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), who is chair of the all-party group on British Sikhs, and other members of that all-party group who have campaigned on this matter for a long time. It is never a reflection of the ONS’s or the Government’s recognition of or respect for any ethnicity, religion or national identity if it does not have a tick-box response option on the census. That in itself answers a number of the points raised by Members today: not to have a tick box is no marker of discrimination or the ignoring of any particular community.

The content of the draft census order is informed by an extensive programme of research and consultation with a wide range of stakeholders carried out by the ONS, and it is necessary to prioritise what is included in the questionnaire. I remind the House of the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess): 55 new tick boxes were requested for the ethnic group question alone—that gives a sense of the context—and each request has to be reviewed against a detailed set of prioritisation measures before the final recommendation is made.

As a result of that rigorous process, the only additional response option that has been included in the ethnic group question is Roma. It has to be found that there is a strong need for data and that no suitable alternative data or alternative sources are available to meet the need. The process is detailed by the ONS; I am giving some selected points from it. In the Roma case, a new tick box was found to be acceptable for those answering the census question.

Let me come back to the Sikh community. There will continue to be a specific Sikh response option in the census question on religion. Despite it being a voluntary question, the response rate on the religion question is very high, at more than 92%, and we are confident, through the ONS, that religion data from the census will provide high-quality data for public bodies to inform service provision and equalities monitoring.

The right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) said that we should either do one thing or another—that we should make things better or we should have a tick box. I assure him that we are making things better. The ONS recognises that data on religion is not routinely collected and that that is a source of concern for communities, so the ONS will use the new possibilities provided by the Digital Economy Act 2017 to address precisely that point. The ONS began by producing an analytical report on religion in February this year, and there is more work to come. I look forward to seeing it, as I know other Members will, too.

I should say, for members of the Sikh community, that people will continue to be able to record their ethnic group in the census however they wish, by recording it in the write-in boxes provided. An online functionality will assist people in doing that. With those reassurances, I hope it is clear that the ONS and the Government recognise the need for data on different communities; will provide a wide range of statistical outputs to meet their needs; will work with local authorities and public bodies to ensure the availability of that data; and will, given the innovations in this census, provide some of the best analysis that there may ever have been, to help them to better serve the different communities in their areas. Let me also offer reassurance at this stage that Public Health England has been asked to undertake a more detailed analysis into differences between ethnic groups in respect of covid-19.

Let me go on to the somewhat related challenges that have been put forward around Cornish national identity. Here I want to offer a further recognition, which is that the Government understand the points that have been made by Cornish Members today about the distinct culture and heritage of Cornwall and how important this is to the people of Cornwall, who are understandably very proud of their history. May I say—I hope I do not mangle the pronunciation—meur ras to those who have made those points here today? However, the ONS has found that the need for data on Cornish populations is localised and not strong enough, in the context of the many requests for new census questions, to justify the inclusion of Cornish national identity in the nationwide census.

The ONS is absolutely committed to working with Cornish MPs, Cornwall Council and others to meet its data needs through data gathered through the write-in option and will be promoting this in both the national and local census campaigns. I particularly want to reassure my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) that that will go beyond the boundaries of Cornwall and will be available anywhere across the country. The ONS will be marketing this work both nationally and locally, and will promote beyond Cornwall the ability to self-identify as Cornish, acknowledging the point that has been made about the Cornish diaspora. I hope that is helpful to hon. Members here today who have raised points about Cornwall.

Let me turn to the points that have been made—for example, by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West—about digital exclusion. Here I also offer some points about homelessness and the provisions for how the census will be completed. The ONS will be working with various organisations to provide support to those who are offline for various reasons or finding it difficult to complete the census online. There will be additional help, including language support and paper forms. There is also an option of completion by telephone, which may be helpful in relation to my hon. Friend’s point about those who are blind and partially sighted. The ONS will also employ community advisers with various relevant language skills, which I hope goes to his point about those with English as a second language. He also asked about communal establishments. They will be enumerated differently to households, as they were 10 years ago, so there will be a particular communal establishment questionnaire. He also asked what the penalties would be for failure to comply. Those penalties derive from the Census Act 1920, and failure to complete and return the questionnaire can attract a fine of up to £1,000.

I want to mention homelessness, which is an important topic here. It is important that rough sleepers and homeless people are included in the 2021 census. I know that we all appreciate the fact that rough sleepers, in particular, are a small, visible and very disadvantaged subgroup within the wider homeless population, so there are provisions to ensure that the ONS reaches homeless individuals by, for example, working with day centres and night shelters. It is finalising that approach, and I am confident that it will make more details available to the House, should that be wanted. Let me tick off the question of a risk of a cyber-attack, which my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West asked about. I can give him an assurance that the ONS has that plan in place, including having used the services of the National Cyber Security Centre to carry out a security review.

Let me now turn to some of the questions raised by the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams). He asked a specific question on whether the final questionnaire would include the terms “Asian Welsh” and “black Welsh” in the high-level descriptions. I can confirm to him that that is occurring, following a point that was raised by the Welsh Government. We welcome the improvement of the census by that interaction, and I thank my colleagues in the Welsh Government for that.

The hon. Gentleman also asked about how those who speak Welsh outside Wales will be accommodated in this census.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (David T. C. Davies)]

Hear, hear!

[Chloe Smith]

I hear support for that from another Welsh colleague in the House. There are proposals for ensuring that those whose first language is Welsh, and those who have both English and Welsh as first languages, will be able to record that in the “main language” question, but perhaps it would make most sense for me to write to the hon. Gentleman to be clear about how else that issue will be accommodated throughout the questionnaire.

I think I am coming to the end of the questions that hon. Members raised with me, so I will now make a few general points before I commend this order to the House. As I said in my opening remarks, I hope that hon. Members will find it easy and rewarding to work with the Office for National Statistics in their communities and constituencies, and help constituents to respond to the census. I thank in advance right hon. and hon. Members who I am sure will do that, as well as all those who have contributed to this debate. Given the quality of debate that we have had, I hope we have supported a high-quality census, which in turn will provide vital information for decision making in our society. The ONS has worked hard over a number of years to bring forward proposals that will work for the population of this country and give us the good quality data we need, and I hope I have provided those reassurances to the House today on its behalf. I have further tried to provide reassurances to the House about other Government actions regarding those topics that have been mentioned today.

It is essential that everybody is counted in the census next year, as that will provide policy makers and decision makers with the information they require to help target resources where they are most needed, as efficiently and effectively as possible. I am confident that this first predominantly online census will deliver that, and over time I look forward to bringing forward the remaining regulations. I commend this order to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That items 2 (resident particulars), 5, 6 (visitor particulars), 10, 11, 13, 16, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24 (demographic particulars), 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, 36(d) (education and employment particulars), 41, 42, 43 (accommodation particulars), 45, 46 (additional particulars for individual returns) in Schedule 2, and items 1, 2, 3 and 4 in Schedule 3 to the draft Census (England and Wales) Order 2020, which was laid before this House on 2 March, be approved.