§ Mr. VazTo ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office if he will make a statement on the availability of records which monitor the number of ethnic minorities in Government offices; and what plans he has to publish the breakdown of Government employees by race and gender. [78121]
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§ Mr. KilfoyleInformation on ethnic origin is collected through voluntary surveys in Departments and agencies. The information is treated in confidence, and to protect the privacy of individual staff in any statistical table, numbers relating to fewer than five people are not disclosed, though this policy is under review.
Information about the ethnic origin and gender of employees is submitted quarterly by Departments and agencies to Mandate, the Cabinet Office's database of civil service personnel. Aggregate information about ethnic origin and gender is collected annually from those Departments and agencies who do not currently provide Mandate records. A service-wide analysis at 1 April each year is published in "Equal Opportunities in the Civil Service Data Summary". The information for 1998 was published in February 1999. We plan to publish the 1999 Data Summary towards the end of the year.