Cabinet Office written question – answered at on 12 December 2013.
The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.
Letter from Caron Walker, dated December 2013
On behalf of Director General for the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I have been asked to reply to your Parliamentary Question what estimate has been made of the number of Roma currently residing in the UK. (179018)
ONS is responsible for the census in England and Wales. The census is a devolved matter in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where it is the responsibility of the Registrars General for Scotland and Northern Ireland respectively. However, ONS has a responsibility to collate statistics for the UK where possible.
There was not a separate category for 'Roma' in the ethnic group questions in any of the UK censuses. However, anyone who wished to record their ethnicity as 'Roma' could do so by using the write-in options. The number of people who described themselves as ‘Roma’ is not included in any census standard outputs. In order to supply you with the information requested, the three census offices have produced a table (CT0112) which shows the number of people in the UK who described themselves as Roma is 785.
Although you have asked for information on Roma, you may be interested in statistics of Gypsy/Traveller/Irish Traveller. Information has been extracted from published 2011 Census Key Statistics tables KS201EW, KS201SC and KS201NI. The ethnic group question categories were not labelled the same in each of the UK censuses but they do provide comparable statistics. The question category labels and the relevant statistics are shown as follows.
England and Wales: ‘Gypsy or Irish Traveller’—57,680
Scotland: ‘Gypsy/Traveller’—4,212
Northern Ireland: ‘Irish Traveller’—1,301
Table KS201EW is available from
http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/ks201ew
Table KS201SC is available from
http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/documents/censusresults/release2a/scotland/KS201SC.xls
Table KS201NI is available from
http://www.ninis2.nisra.gov.uk/public/pivotgrid.aspx?dataSetVars=ds-2484-lh-44-yn-2011-sk-136-sn-Census%202011-yearfilter--
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