Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what proportion of staff in his Department in receipt of each category of Honour in (a) December 2018 and (b) June 2019 were (i) from ethnic minority backgrounds and (ii) female aged (A) under 30, (B) 31 to 40, (C) 41 to 50 and (D) aged over 50.

The Government is committed to ensuring that the honours system is fully representative of UK society. The proportion of women and people from ethnic minorities receiving recognition on each honours list is available on GOV.UK, as is a breakdown of ethnicities of recipients on the Ethnicity Facts and Figures website at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/honours-recipients-by-ethnicity.

Information on ages is not correlated with other diversity factors. We also publish the proportion of honours by independent committee on GOV.UK. The numbers of honours recipients in the Department for International Development are very small and vary from year to year. Releasing the requested data would identify the individuals and they have given permission for their data to be used for statistical purposes only.