The key facts
- Liberal Democrat Josh Babarinde has tabled a bill in the House of Commons to expand the ethnic categories of England's census
- In the 2021 census, 'English' ethnicity was available only within the white category, whereas Wales and Scotland have black Welsh and Scottish Asian categories
- Supporters of the initiative include Labour's David Lammy and Conservative James Cleverly; Suella Braverman considers Englishness an ethnicity and disagrees with the proposal
Proposal to expand census categories
A group of British parliamentarians has called for the next census to allow people to identify themselves as 'Black English' or 'Asian English'. This is reported by BBC News. Liberal Democrat Josh Babarinde, MP for Eastbourne, tabled a private member's bill in the House of Commons on Tuesday, informally called the 'St George's Bill' and officially the English Ethnic Identity (census particulars) Bill. Among its supporters are Labour's David Lammy, a former deputy prime minister, and the Conservative Sir James Cleverly.
What the initiative's authors are unhappy about
The trigger was the design of the ethnicity section of the 2021 census: the word 'English' appeared only within the white category. For Black residents the form offered the option 'Black British', for Asians 'Asian British', but not 'English'; only a free-text field remained. Babarinde noted that in Wales the census already includes a black Welsh category, and in Scotland a Scottish Asian one. In his speech he called himself a 'proud Englishman' with a 'proud Nigerian heritage', stressed that he and his parents were born and raised in England, and said he had received death threats 'for daring to say that to be English you don't have to be white'. In his words, English ethnicity 'has never been a single bloodline', and he asked: 'Is the King not English either?' — referring to the German roots of the royal family.
The dispute over who may call themselves English
David Lammy said in a statement that it was absurd that neither he nor his mixed-heritage children could enter 'Black' or 'Mixed' together with 'English' in the census, and called for an end to 'backward racial gatekeeping'. Suella Braverman takes the opposite position: in 2025, while still a Conservative MP (she later defected to Reform UK), she wrote in the Daily Telegraphthat she is a British Asian but 'cannot claim to be English', despite being born and educated in England. Recently she reaffirmed this position on X, writing that 'Englishness is an ethnicity', that the English have existed for centuries, and that calling her English would deny her Asian heritage. Babarinde told the BBC that 'people like Suella Braverman have genuinely undermined and called into question the Englishness of people like me'.
Prospects for the bill
Babarinde introduced the bill under the 'ten minute rule' procedure, and no MP rose to object. Its second reading is scheduled for 23 April 2027 — St George's Day. However, as the BBC notes, in its current form the bill is unlikely to progress further due to a lack of parliamentary time: private members' bills serve primarily as a way to raise an issue and demonstrate support for an idea, rather than as a guaranteed path to legislation. In other words, what is being discussed so far is the parliamentarians' declared position, not an adopted decision to change the census.
Image source, Getty Images 
