§ Mr. VazTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will provide a breakdown, in numerical and percentage terms, of the ethnic origin, at 1 March, of(a) his Private Office, (b) Government special advisers, (c) his policy unit and (d) staff in total. [78498]
§ Mr. StrawA voluntary self-classification system is used to record the ethnic origin of staff in the Home Office. For my Private Office1 the breakdown of staff by ethnic origin on 22 March is set out in the table. As the numbers of staff with ethnic minority origins within Private Office are small, only a percentage of staff are shown to protect the privacy of individuals (in accordance with the guidelines set out in the Civil Service Ethnic Monitoring Code of Practice).
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Home Office Private Office staff by ethnic origin1,2 Ethnic origin Percentage in Private Office Asian-Bangladeshi 1.6 Asian-Chinese 1.6 Asian-Indian 6.6 Asian-Other 1.6 Asian-Pakistani 3.3 Black-Caribbean 5 All Ethnic Minority Groups 20 White 80 1Ministerial Secretariat (including the Permanent Secretary's Office) 2 Of those whose ethnicity is recorded 89.5 per cent. of Private Office staff With regard to special advisers, I refer my hon. Friend to the reply given to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone). by my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office on 22 February 1999, Official Report, column 39.
With regard to Home Office staff as a whole, I refer my hon. Friend to the reply given to him by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office on 31 March 1999, Official Report, columns 710–11.
I do not have a policy unit.