Official data on ethnicity and inequality: over-promising and under-delivering
An audit of recommendations on data and statistics from recent UK government reviews related to aspects of ethnicity and inequality.
Executive summary
Since 2016, the UK Government has commissioned four major official independent reviews to study various aspects of inequality in relation to ethnicity in the UK. These reviews have made 26 separate recommendations to improve the collection, publication and use of data and statistics related to race and ethnicity.
Most of these data-related recommendations were formally accepted by the Government, showing that Ministers expect improvements in data collection and publication. However, an audit by the Centre for Public Data (CFPD) shows that few of these recommendations have been fully implemented.
CFPD undertook a detailed review of progress reports and searched for published data, to assess whether these 26 data-related recommendations had been implemented. Where necessary, we requested additional information directly from the relevant statistics and data publishers.
Overall, we found that 11 recommendations of 26 were not implemented, three were partly implemented, eight were in progress (but typically taking forward only part of the recommendation), and one was unclear. Only three were fully implemented, of which one was unrelated to the review. A full audit of our findings is below.
Progress towards implementation was particularly poor in recommendations related to publishing data to improve accountability over specific institutions, such as courts and prisons. There was also little evidence that existing evidence of disparities is being used to inform strategy.
We highlight the following specific failures to implement recommendations, and note that all these recommendations were accepted by the Government:
Prison and court data: No breakdowns by ethnicity appear to have been published for data on sentence lengths at court level, or for new indicators at prison level, so potential disparities at institutions remain hidden.
Using data to ‘explain or reform’ disparities: There is little evidence that an ‘explain or reform’ approach to disparities highlighted by data has been adopted across criminal justice institutions, as recommended in the Lammy Review. Our attempts to obtain details were unsuccessful.
Using new ‘use of force’ data to inform national strategy: Although new data about police use of force has been published, there is no evidence it is being used in the development of national strategy, as recommended in the Angiolini Review.
Using data to identify Windrush victims: Data is not being used to identify further potential Windrush victims, as recommended by both the Williams Review and National Audit Office.
Our audit reveals repeated failures to act on data-related recommendations. To address these issues, and ensure that future recommendations relating to the use of data and statistics are acted upon more effectively, we recommend:
The Ministry of Justice and Home Office should now either implement the outstanding recommendations, or clarify why they will not be implemented.
Ministers must ensure that future updates clearly describe progress, and where a particular dataset is recommended for collection or publication, reference the specific datasets recommended.
Parliament should ask the UK’s independent statistics regulator to track the progress of statistics-related review recommendations that are accepted by the Government, and intervene if progress is insufficient.
If the new Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities - which is currently conducting its own review of UK inequality - makes recommendations related to the collection, publication or use of data and statistics, it should ask the Government to commit to specific targets and timescales for implementation.
Table of findings
The full findings can be viewed in the report.
