Make public bodies recognise Jews and Sikhs as ethnic groups, Parliament told

A bill to make public bodies recognise Jews and Sikhs as ethnic groups was heard in Parliament today.

Officially known as the Public Body Ethnicity Data (Inclusion of Jewish and Sikh Categories) Bill, it would require a public body collecting data about ethnicity for the purpose of delivering public services to include specific “Sikh” and “Jewish” categories as options for a person’s ethnic group.

Under the Equality Act (2010) Jews and Sikhs are considered both ethnic and religious groups.

Currently, public bodies use ethnicity data in compliance with equalities legislation. But despite being recognised as both, Jews and Sikhs are listed under religion.

Preet Kaur Gill, Labour MP for Birmingham Edgebaston who brought forward the bill, told MPs it would “address a fundamental absurdity in the fight against discrimination and inequality, which is that we have not collected ethnicity data on Sikhs and Jews since laws on racial discrimination were first introduced nearly 60 years ago.”

Gill suggested that the scale of antisemitism in the UK may be being unterestimated by official bodies because of that absence: “Since October 7, the British Jewish community has faced an appalling rise in antisemitic hate attacks. While the Home Office collects data on religiously motivated antisemitic hate crimes, it does not do so on racially aggravated antisemitism.

She added: “That is despite instances of racial hate crime outnumbering instances of religiously aggravated hate crime by 10 to one. There is a serious risk that Jewish hate crimes are being undercounted by the Home Office because it does not have its own Jewish ethnic category.”

The Birmingham MP also cited the JC’s report in October about the warning by the chief executive of the UK Jewish film festival about the “erasure of British-Jewish culture from national cultural life” as a reason why her bill was needed.

She told MPs: “Benjamin Till, a composer who has been nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award, told the Jewish Chronicle that Arts Council England ‘doesn’t allow Jewish people to identify as anything other than a religion’. He insists that Arts Council England ‘must accept that Jewishness is a cultural, and…an ethnic identity.’”

The bill was backed by Jewish Labour MPs including Hendon’s David Pinto-Duschinsky, Leeds West and Headingley’s Alex Sobel and new MP for Chelsea and Fulham Ben Coleman.

The Board of Deputies welcomed the bill and Vice President Andrew Gilbert told the JC: “We are delighted that Preet Kaur Gill MP is moving this important bill forward in Parliament.

He continued: “In the aftermath of October 7, the measures contained in this bill are more important than ever. It is vital that when it comes to housing, crime, policing and employment that Jews are seen and that our concerns are not dismissed.

Gilbert added: “Our meetings with the leadership of public sector organisations have driven home the need for meaningful change to be taken as soon as possible.”

The bill is scheduled to be read a second time in March next year, however, as it is unlikely to become law unless it receives the formal backing of the government.

Earlier this year, the JC reported that the Office for National Statistics revised the census data on British Jews by adding Jews who identified as ethnic-only rather than religious to the total figure.

While the religious question on the census is optional, “Jewish” was listed as one of the response categories. The ethnic question is compulsory but to identify as Jewish one must tick the “other” boxes and then write in “Jewish”.

In 2022, the Board of Deputies called for the option of a Jewish ethnic category to be included on the census.