Baroness Fox, an Independent member of the House of Lords, has commended legal action aimed at preventing civil service participation in Pride events.
The Christian Institute recently initiated legal proceedings against both the civil service and Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The case argues that by taking part in Pride events on taxpayer time and funds, the supposedly neutral civil service is in fact endorsing a highly controversial political position.
The case follows similar action brought against Northumbria Police in which a judge ruled last July that the participation of uniformed police officers in a Pride event had been unlawful.
That decision came in response to a case brought by a gender critical lesbian, Linzi Smith, who argued that police participation in a Pride march indicated support for a specific political ideology and that consequently members of the public could not trust the police to fairly adjudicate disagreements relating to that ideology.
The Christian Institute is attempting to have the same principle applied across all sectors of government.
Baroness Fox, a former Marxist with secular leanings, said she supported the idea of public servants performing their primary functions rather than getting side-tracked by “politicised equality initiatives”.
Speaking during a debate in the Lords on the Crime and Policing Bill, she said, “For the public, the idea of a politicised police force fuels the argument that the police may be unfair or discriminatory in who they target for, for example, non-crime hate incidents.
"Though we have seen the back of those, they were the blight of many a person’s life and destroyed many citizens’ lives.
“We need reassurance that the public sector equality duty has not been used to distract the police or to politicise policing. All the evidence would imply that it has been, and that is something that the Government should be concerned about.”
The Christian Institute’s deputy director, Simon Calvert, has previously commented on how blatant support for Pride has been in the civil service.
He said, “I have been working in public policy for decades. I’ve been shocked by how many civil servants wear Pride lanyards in our meetings with them, even when those meetings are specifically about conflicts with that ideology.
“Sitting in front of a phalanx of civil servants in rainbow lanyards gives the impression that their minds are closed on the issues we are discussing. It certainly does not communicate the kind of neutrality that taxpayers expect of civil servants.”
