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Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office: Ethnic Groups

Asked by Preet Kaur GillLabour (Co-op)Foreign, Commonwealth and Development OfficeTabled Answered 16 July 2025UIN 66617

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing specific (a) Sikh and (b) Jewish options for a person’s ethnic group in data collection conducted by his Department.

Answered by Catherine West

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office follows the Government Statistical Service's harmonised standard for ethnicity classification. We will not unilaterally change our data categories as it would make our data inconsistent with wider Civil Service and Office for National Statistics (ONS) statistics.

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