A bill proposing the changes is being tabled by the Lib Dems\u2019 Josh Babarinde and has the backing of senior MPs including David Lammy, James Cleverly and Layla Moran. Photograph: Martin Godwin\/The GuardianView image in fullscreenA bill proposing the changes is being tabled by the Lib Dems\u2019 Josh Babarinde and has the backing of senior MPs including David Lammy, James Cleverly and Layla Moran. Photograph: Martin Godwin\/The GuardianExclusive: Cross-party call for ethnicity options to be broadened beyond \u2018English\u2019 being only within \u2018White\u2019 categoryBritons should be able to define themselves as both Black and English, according to senior MPs who are calling to broaden the range of ethnicity options in the census.The cross-party push is a riposte to Reform UK politicians who have claimed that people from minority ethnic backgrounds cannot have English ethnic identity.The Liberal Democrat president, Josh Babarinde, is launching the drive, with backing from the former deputy prime minister David Lammy, the former foreign secretary James Cleverly and other prominent MPs including the Conservative Mark Pritchard and the Lib Dem chair of the health select committee, Layla Moran.The MPs say the current definition of Englishness on the census means 60% of England\u2019s World Cup squad would not technically be classified as English on the census.\u201cI\u2019m a proud Englishman and Englishness is about more than the colour of your skin,\u201d Babarinde said. \u201cMost people in this country already agree that you don\u2019t have to be White to be English. Just look at the England football team.<\/p>\n
But our census hasn\u2019t properly caught up.\u201dMPs backing a bill proposing the change have been highly critical of comments from the Reform UK MP Suella Braverman \u2013 a former Conservative home secretary \u2013 in which she said she did not consider herself ethnically English because of her south Asian heritage.Braverman said she did not take \u201ca \u2018laissez-faire, anything-goes\u2019 attitude to ethnicity, citizenship and identity \u2026 I take the conservative approach. Englishness is an ethnicity. There have been English people for centuries and we need to recognise this more if we are to start taking a more muscular approach to citizenship and nationality. And no, it\u2019s not racist to say this.\u201dView image in fullscreenSuella Braverman\u2019s comments have drawn criticism even inside Reform UK, with the party\u2019s chair, Zia Yusuf, distancing himself from her view.<\/p>\n
Photograph: Sean Smith\/The GuardianThose remarks are part of the motivation for some MPs to seek a change to the next census to ensure that Englishness is not categorised separately to ethnicity. In England, the ethnic group question offers \u201cEnglish\u201d only within the \u201cWhite\u201d category, although about 11% of UK-born population in England and Wales (about 5 million people) are from a minority ethnic background.But Asian, Black, mixed and other respondents can describe themselves as British, for example \u201cAsian or Asian British\u201d, but have no option to describe themselves as English.This stands in contrast to the census in Scotland and Wales, which offers options such as \u201cScottish Asian\u201d, and \u201cBlack Welsh\u201d.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMPs will give their backing to a 10-minute rule bill on Tuesday tabled by Babarinde. The short bills rarely become law but are used by MPs as devices to raise particular matters of policy. The bill would require the ethnic group question in future censuses in England to give respondents in every category the option to identify as English.The bill also has backing from Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty, Labour\u2019s Adam Jogee and and the Lib Dems\u2019 Munira Wilson.\u201cThis bill is about standing up to those want to gatekeep Englishness exclusively for White people and standing up to those who seek to divide us over who counts as English.<\/p>\n
This is about bringing people together around our shared Englishness,\u201d Babarinde said.Braverman\u2019s comments have drawn criticism even within Reform UK. The party\u2019s chair, Zia Yusuf, distanced himself from her view, saying: \u201cI\u2019m a Chelsea fan and in my view Ashley Cole is the best English fullback in history, and I won\u2019t take any other position. So in my view, Ashley Cole is English. The argument that he\u2019s not English doesn\u2019t hold water with me.\u201dExplore more on these topicsBritish identity and societyCensusEnglandRaceOffice for National StatisticsnewsShareReuse this content<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A bill proposing the changes is being tabled by the Lib Dems\u2019 Josh Babarinde and has the backing of senior MPs including David Lammy, James Cleverly and Layla Moran. Photograph: Martin Godwin\/The GuardianView image in\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}