§ Mr. Michael Brownasked the Secretary of State for Social Services when last he received an authoritative measurement of the total number of persons of non-British ethnic origin resident in this country.
§ Sir George YoungEstimates derived from a large-scale sample of the population of England in 1977, analysed according to the proportion of the sample who classified themselves as white or belonging to four other broad ethnic groupings, were contained in the report on the national dwelling and housing survey which was published by HMSO in February 1979. This and other recent surveys which have collected information about the ethnic origin of the population have given results which are broadly consistent, making allowance for sampling variability, with the annual estimates of the size of the population of New Commonwealth and Pakistani ethnic origin—updated from results obtained from the 1971 census—which are produced by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys; the most recent of these related to mid-1978.