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Home Office

Answer

Mr. Menzies Campbell: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will amend the statutory Code of Practice on the Duty to Promote Race Equality so that it requires public authorities to monitor Sikhs separately. [78213] Beverley Hughes: Some Sikh organisations have argued that Sikhs should be monitored as a separate ethnic group rather than subsumed in one of the generic monitoring categories used in the 2001 census. The fact that case law has established Sikhs as an ethnic group for the purposes of the Race Relations Act does not, of itself, justify different treatment from the many other ethnic and racial groups in the United Kingdom. Therefore, we do not intend to amend the statutory Code of Practice. The statutory Code of Practice is not prescriptive about the form of ethnic monitoring. Rather it encourages authorities to use the same ethnic classification system as used in the 2001 census, or categories that match them very closely. However the statutory Code also recognises that authorities may choose to collect more detailed information to reflect local circumstances. Public authorities with significant Sikh populations in their area may opt to do this. Helpfully, demographic information about British Sikhs will be available for the first time from the results of the religious identity question in the 2001 census due to be published next February.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

78213; 392 c774W;392 c806W

Session

2001-02

Subjects

Codes of practice Equality Monitoring Minority groups Race relations Reform Sikhs

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk