Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether any public bodies covered by the Race Disparity Audit have collected information on Sikhs as a legally recognised ethnic group since 1983; and what plans he has to fill any gaps in that data.

Public bodies collect data on Sikhs as a religious group, for example through the Census. The Office of National Statistics are currently evaluating the effect of including a Sikh ‘tick box’ within the ethnic group question for Census 2021. The ONS findings will be published in autumn 2017. The Race Disparity Audit collected data from Government Departments recorded by ethnicity. No data was collated about Sikhs as part of the Audit.