You asked
Please provide data for the chart '3. The mortality rate from COVID-19 has been highest among black men' (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19in10charts/2020-09-24) broken down by the 16 standard ethnic groups.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc984/fig3/index.html
We said
Thank you for your enquiry. We are unable to offer any further disaggregation of this chart in line with our disclosure policy.
The reason for our ethnic groupings is because of the number of deaths in the reference period of our analysis. We must ensure that what we publish is not disclosive and this becomes increasingly difficult with more detailed ethnic breakdowns and even more so when combining with other characteristics such as age and sex.
Consequently, this information is considered to be exempt from release under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (SRSA) renders it an offence to disclose information held by the Statistics Board for statistical purposes that would identify an individual or a body corporate. As we are prohibited by law from publishing statistics in which individuals can be identified, we find that Section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies. Section 44 is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied.
However, please see the following link to our latest publication, which breaks down COVID-19 deaths by ethnicity: Updating ethnic contrasts in deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19), England and Wales: deaths occurring 2 March to 28 July 2020. This offers further investigation building on previously published models.