Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions he has had with the BBC on (a) the omission of religion in the diversity monitoring system Project Diamond and (b) the effect of that omission on on-off screen diversity monitoring of faith groups working in or with that public service broadcaster.

We expect broadcasters to voluntarily publish their data on all diversity characteristics - not just those they are legally obliged to - and the BBC should be leading the way on this.There have been no discussions with broadcasters regarding Project Diamond monitoring categories. Project Diamond is an industry led monitoring scheme owned by the Creative Diversity Network which is made up of all of the UK’s major broadcasters. Therefore, the decision to include or exclude categories is for the Creative Diversity Network alone.