Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have any plans to make changes in the 2021 Census to the questions on (1) religion, and (2) ethnicity, used in the 2011 Census of England and Wales; and if so, what any such changes are.

The Census (England) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020/560) set out the questions for Census 2021 in England and include facsimiles of the paper questionnaires. The religion question is the same as that asked in the 2011 Census. For the ethnic group question, two substantive changes to the question used in 2011 have been made:

• a new tick-box response option for ‘Roma’

• a write-in option for those selecting ‘African background’ within the ‘Black, Black British, Caribbean or African’ high-level category.

People can still declare another religion or ethnicity, even if it is not a tick-box response option.

The parallel Census (Wales) Regulations 2020 were made by Welsh Ministers and laid before the Welsh Parliament.