Source · Select Committees · Women and Equalities Committee
Recommendation 7
7
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We understand that data sharing is voluntary.
Recommendation
We understand that data sharing is voluntary. However, we believe it is the Government’s responsibility to build trust among BAME communities so that they are comfortable in volunteering data. We strongly disagree with the Minister’s approach and the resistance to deploy resources for data collection; this does not show a sustained effort to capture “a full picture”. The Government should collect, and report, disaggregated data on clinical outcomes, for instance, the share of BAME people being tested, how many have tested positive and the share of BAME people being admitted to hospital. We believe that this is essential in assessing the impact of coronavirus on BAME people; any data collected should be disaggregated by ethnic group to allow for a much more granular analysis of the problems. The Government should collect, and report, disaggregated data on clinical outcomes, for instance, the share of BAME people being tested, how many have tested positive and the share of BAME people being admitted to hospital. We believe that this is essential in assessing the impact of coronavirus on BAME people; any data collected should be disaggregated by ethnic group to allow for a much more granular analysis of the problems. This data collection should begin immediately.
Paragraph Reference:
51
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
Robust, reliable data is critical to understanding underlying racial disparities. As set out in both the SAGE ethnicity sub-group paper7 and the Minister for Equalities report of 22 October,8 a coordinated effort is required to improve data quality and insight at the local and national level to strengthen the debate and inform decision-making. Availability of ethnicity in COVID-19 datasets Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES) is a dataset containing records of all patients admitted to NHS hospitals in England, and includes the ethnicity of the patient. Further work is ongoing within PHE to improve the allocation of ethnicity to COVID-19 cases and deaths. Improvements will be implemented over the coming months. Within the NHS Test and Trace programme, ethnicity is recorded for pillar 1 testing (swab testing in PHE labs and NHS hospitals for those with a clinical need, and health and care workers). 6 NHS England, COVID-19 Vaccination Statistics 7 SAGE ethnicity sub-group paper 8 Race Disparity Unit’s recommendations in First Quarterly Report on COVID-19 Disparities Both the ONS COVID-19 Infection Survey (CIS), and Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN) are important in measuring different aspects of the impact of COVID-19. The CIS enables estimates of the rate of transmission of the infection, often referred to as “R”. The OPN is an important source of data about the social impacts of COVID-19. Indicators from the OPN measure the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on people, households and communities. The RDU is working with ONS analysts to improve the quality of data for ethnic minority groups from these two surveys and increase the potential analyses available. Since 24 December, NHS England has published weekly UK-wide data on the total number of vaccinations. As noted above, from 28 January, this data has also been broken down by ethnicity.9 Improving the quality of ethnicity data The RDU has been working to improve the quality of data used to measure the impacts of COVID-19 on people in ethnic minority groups. This has included exploring ways to improve the classification of ethnicity. Comprehensive and quality ethnicity data collection and analysis needs to be part of routine data collection systems. This includes mandating the Unified Information Standard for Protected Characteristics (UISPC), which the DHSC has committed to following the Minister for Equalities’ first report. Ethnicity data collection should span service-level statistics from prevention and treatment to support and rehabilitation services.