TOI correspondent from London: Labour Sikh MP Preet Kaur Gill on Wednesday in the House of Commons successfully introduced a new bill for Sikh and Jewish people in Britain to be classed as ethnic categories when public bodies collect data for the purpose of delivering public services.
In her speech introducing the Public Body Ethnicity Data (Inclusion of Jewish and Sikh Categories) Bill, Gill said Jews and Sikhs are considered to be both ethnic and religious groups under the Equality Act, 2010. Referring to the 1983 Mandla vs Dowell Lee case, which found Sikhs to be an ethnic group, she said the bill would address a fundamental absurdity that the UK does not collect ethnic data on Jews and Sikhs. Gill said the only data collected on Jews and Sikhs is religious data. But this is “poor, patchy and incomplete”, and is never used by bodies to make decisions for the purposes of delivering public services.
Using rare data, she said the pandemic revealed that both Sikh and Jewish people were dying at a significantly greater rate than others. “In 2018, 5.3% of homeless deaths in London were Sikh vs 1.3% of the general population; 27% of Sikhs in the UK report that someone in their family has an alcohol addiction… Local councils don’t count us in the data they use to deliver services,” she said.
The bill passed and the second reading is on March 7, 2025. It could get voted down or amended as it winds its way through parliament.
