It is a legal fact that the House of Lords ruled in the Mandla v Dowell-Lee case of 1983 that Sikhs are an ethnic group and not simply a religion (Census questions on ethnicity and gender, Letters, 12 October).
As there is not a separate Sikh ethnic tick box in the census, the majority of schools, hospitals, local authorities and other public bodies ignore Sikhs when considering jobs and service provision. It also explains why earlier this month the PM’s race disparity audit totally ignored Sikhs. Hundreds of MPs from five different political parties representing hundreds of thousands of Sikhs and millions of non-Sikhs therefore are supporting the campaign for inclusion of a Sikh ethnic tick box in the 2021 census.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) cannot ignore the 83,362 Sikhs who in the last census rejected the existing ethnic group categories and ticked “other” and wrote Sikh, or the stakeholders working in the education, health, local government and business sectors that recognise the need for information on Sikhs to plan and make decisions on service provision.
Damian Green, the minister responsible for presenting the census white paper, told me he had an open mind on the inclusion of a Sikh ethnic tick box in the 2021 census. Nonetheless, an adjournment debate in parliament is planned to leave the ONS and the Cabinet Office in no doubt of the strength of feeling of MPs.
Preet Kaur Gill MP
Labour, Birmingham Edgbaston,
Chair of the All-Party Group for British Sikhs
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