The election of Barack Obama has started a debate in The UK about whether a black candidate could be elected here. This debate has also raised the question of representation of ethnic minorities in the British parliament.
For what it’s worth, I did a bit of research to try to figure out if the number of ethnic minority MPs in the House of Commons is representative of the population as a whole.
Unsurprisingly I do not have my own statistics and so I searched the web and found ethnic Population statistics for the UK from 2001 on http://www.statistics.gov.uk here and an ethnic breakdown of the British Parliament from 2005 on parliament.uk here
My research showed that ethnic minorities are under represented. I have tabulated the results below.
|
Ethnic group |
Population |
% |
MPs |
% |
|
White |
54,153,898.00 |
92.11% |
631 |
97.68% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mixed |
677,117.00 |
1.15% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Inidan |
1,053,411.00 |
1.79% |
|
|
|
Pakistani |
747,285.00 |
1.27% |
|
|
|
Bangladeshi |
283,062.00 |
0.48% |
|
|
|
Other Sian |
247,664.00 |
0.42% |
|
|
|
All Asian or Asian British |
2,331,423.00 |
3.97% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Black Caribbean |
656,876.00 |
1.12% |
|
|
|
Black African |
485,277.00 |
0.83% |
|
|
|
Black other |
97,585.00 |
0.17% |
|
|
|
All Black or Black British |
1,148,738.00 |
1.95% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chinese |
247,403.00 |
0.42% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Other Ethnic groups |
230,615.00 |
0.39% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
All minority ethnic population |
4,635,296.00 |
7.88% |
15 |
2.32% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
All population |
58,789,194.00 |
100% |
646 |
100% |
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