This petition was rejected

The Government e-Petitions Team gave the following reason:

The Government is not responsible for mandating how ethnicity is recorded on diversity monitoring forms.

The Equality Act 2010 created a duties for public sector authorities in respect of equality legislation, but the legislation did not create a legal duty to collect equality information. The Equality Act makes race, including nationality, a protected characteristic.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has advised that having due regard to the aims of the general equality duty requires public authorities to have an adequate evidence base for their decision-making: www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/psed_essential_guide_-_guidance_for_english_public_bodies.pdf

The information that authorities might want to collect is not set out in law, and the EHRC states that the information that different authorities will need to collect to inform their decisions under the general equality duty will vary widely between different sectors, and will depend on a number of factors.

The Government's style guide sets out a list of ethnic groups it recommends be used by government when they ask for someone’s ethnicity: www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/style-guide/ethnic-groups

The recommended groups are decided by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which decides which ethnic groups to include in consultation with users of Census data (like government departments, local authorities, and the National Health Service), and people completing the Census, and the interest groups that represent them.