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Social Security Benefits: Ethnic Groups

Question for Department for Work and Pensions

UIN HL9752, tabled on 20 July 2018

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they conduct ethnic monitoring of social security benefits, including Universal Credit; and if so, whether this system collects data on the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.

Answered on

31 July 2018

Claimants, including Universal Credit claimants, are given the option to provide their ethnicity for monitoring purposes. We have published volumes of claimants broken down by ethnicity for some benefits. This is publically available and can be accessed using DWP’s Stat-Xplore function on the gov.uk website, or the Nomis service provided by the Office for National Statistics.

The data is not broken down to Gypsy, Roma and Travellers. These individuals are captured in the larger ethnic group they identify with.