Race Disparity Audit: Women and Equalities Committee examines the quality of the data

In the first session of its inquiry examining the audit, the Women and Equalities Committee focuses on the data sets themselves, their value, their robustness, their utility on the website and whether there are any gaps in the data that need filling.

The session will be divided into three main sections:

• The value and limitations of administrative data, including concerns around ethnicity information;
• The Ethnicity Facts and Figures Website;
• The utility of the Audit;

Witnesses, at 1030:

• Dr Richard Norrie, Policy Exchange 
• Prof Shamit Saggar, University of Essex 
• Dr Debbie Weekes-Bernard, Joseph Rowntree Foundation 

ENDS

BACKGROUND: RACE DISPARITY AUDIT INQUIRY

The terms of reference for the Committee’s inquiry can be found here.

The Race Disparity Audit

The Audit was launched by the Prime Minister in August 2016. The aims of the audit were to:

• shine a light on how our public services treat people from different backgrounds;
• enable members of the public to check how their race affects how they are treated on key issues such as health, education and employment, broken down by geographic location, income and gender
• show disadvantages suffered by white working class people as well as ethnic minorities
• influence government policy to solve these problems

In October 2017, the Government published the first results of the Race Disparity Audit on the ‘Ethnicity Facts and Figures’ website.

The initial release was of 130 data sets, of which 20 were new data. Over time, measures in the first release of the data will be updated and more measures will be added.

The Government has said that “publishing the data allows people to see how services are performing and highlight where changes are needed. It also challenges us all to show leadership, take accountability and identify where we need to do things differently”.