Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when (a) the Government and (b) Public Health England began to record data on ethnicity in the number of deaths due to covid-19.

Routine statistics on deaths produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) do not include any breakdowns by ethnicity, because ethnicity is not one of the particulars recorded at death registration. The content of the death certificate and the process of registration are laid down by law. However, the ONS is working to produce estimates of death rates by ethnicity by linking death registrations to demographic characteristics recorded at the 2011 Census.

Standard recording practice of laboratory confirmed cases across laboratory systems requires recording of only minimal data, such as date of birth and name; this does not include ethnicity. As these records are not intended for disease surveillance purposes, Public Health England is matching thousands of laboratory records of COVID-19 cases to other health records to draw down accurate data on ethnicity.