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Health Services: Travellers

Question for Department of Health and Social Care

UIN 104474, tabled on 6 December 2022

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is taking steps to ensure that his Department's data collection records the experiences of people from Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller backgrounds.

This answer is the replacement for a previous holding answer.

Answered on

15 December 2022

The NHS Data Model and Dictionary reflects the latest approved Information Standard for the data submission of ethnicity categories in the National Health Service. This is derived from the Office for National Statistics’ categories in 2001, which do not include Gypsy/Romany Gypsy, Roma, and Irish Traveller groupings.

The annual GP Patient Survey assesses patients' experience of general practice and dentistry in England. It collects ethnicity information, including coding for ‘Roma’ and ‘Gypsy or Irish Traveller’ respondents. In the 2022 survey, NHS England received 719,137 responses and of those, 596 were from Roma and 279 were from Gypsy or Irish Traveller respondents.

Named day
Named day questions only occur in the House of Commons. The MP tabling the question specifies the date on which they should receive an answer. MPs may not table more than five named day questions on a single day.