§ Mr. BradyTo ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what estimate he has made of the cost to the NHS of(a) setting up and (b) maintaining the ethnic monitoring programme required by the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000; [108845]
(2) what estimate he has made of the percentage of those registered with general practitioners who have (a) not responded to questionnaires for ethnic monitoring and (b) responded to ethnic monitoring questionnaires but declined to give details of ethnic or religious groups. [108843]
§ Mr. HuttonThe Department of Health does not collect this information centrally.
The collection of ethnic monitoring information is incorporated as an additional data item in existing national health service information systems, hence the cost of collecting this information cannot be disaggregated out from the total cost of NHS information.
The Department does not currently require general practitioners to collect ethnic monitoring information.