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WATCH: Christian Institute hits out at civil service for engaging in 'political' pride events
Dec 22, 2025
The Civil Service has been told to "stick to the day job" and not engage in "political issues" as a top Christian charity has launched legal action against Sir Keir Starmer.Speaking to GB News, Deputy Director of The Christian Institute Simon Calvert detailed the call for a judicial review and declared taxpayers should "not be paying" for civil servants to take part in pride events.FULL STORY HERE.
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A Christian charity, which we know very well, is taking Sir Keir Starmer and its government to court
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to try to stop civil servants taking pride in Pride marches. It's not just LGB, it's now LGBTQ and about nine other letters afterwards
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In taxpayers' time, i.e. when they're meant to be working. Well, the Christian Institute argues that official Pride branding and participation in those Pride marches
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breaches civil service impartiality rules by endorsing what it calls a highly political movement
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We're going to talk to now Simon Calvert, who's Deputy Director of Public Affairs at the Christian Institute
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Simon, morning to you. I think lots of people who perhaps can't get their TV licence
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or their driving licence, they can't get HMRC to answer the phone
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will think, yeah, it must stick in their craw a bit when there are these massive Pride events in work time
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and there are civil servants with their civil servants' lanyard. You're objecting to that, but I think you're also objecting to the fact
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civil servants being civil servants on these marches whenever they take place
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Yes. I want to start, actually, by paying tribute to Lindsay Smith, who sued our local police here, Northumbria Police, over this exact issue
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And she, one, persuaded the court that it was a breach of impartiality duties
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for the police to be officially participating in pride marches. And so we are seeking to apply exactly the same principle
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There are laws which require civil servants to be impartial. There is the guidance which says that you're not to favour particular interests
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Who could doubt that going on a pride march signals your support for that particular cause
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Now, if people want to do that in their own time, civil servants want to do that in their own time, they're perfectly entitled to do it
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But what happens is every year the civil service decides to allocate funding to pay for civil servants
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to participate officially. And then throughout the year, the civil service LGBTQ plus network encourages civil servants to attend It reminds them that they are attending representing the civil service The taxpayer pays for T branded with civil service pride
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We pay for banners. I mean, all of that. What other cause would get that
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I mean, if the idea that the taxpayer was paying for civil servants to attend a just-stop oil protest or something
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people would be properly shocked by that. And the Pride movement is, whatever it used to be, it is now clearly a very particular set of political propositions focused around gender ideology, opposing the Supreme Court ruling and so on
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Why should we be paying for civil servants to officially represent the civil service at marches that stand for all those things which are so unpopular now
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Now, Simon, I think perhaps in previous times, people would have understood the duty of impartiality
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to mean that civil servants are not allowed to prefer one political party over another
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Of course, in private, they can vote how they want, but when they're at work, they have to be impartial
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Why do you think the term political now extends to some of these debates that aren't really about the party you support
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they're about something quite different? Yeah, because it stands, as I say
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Pride stands for a particular set of political ideas. So, again, going back to the court ruling in Lindsay Smith's case against Northumbria Constabulary
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one of the things that the court found was that the Pride March had a particular set of political demands
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I mean, the London Pride March, which is the one presumably Whitehall civil servants take part in
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they actually banned political parties from taking place this year because they felt the mainstream political parties weren't sufficiently supportive
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of all of their demands. So I think it clearly is a political movement
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It clearly does stand for a particular set of changes. And so, again, I mean, I engage with civil servants as a stakeholder
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And so if I going into meetings about you know the clash between sex realism and gender ideology or Christian views and you know the sort of the values of the Pride movement
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If I know that those civil servants are wearing Pride lanyards, maybe participating in Pride marches, I know I'm not going to get a fair hearing
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and they are I mean by wearing pride lanyards in the meeting
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they're effectively campaigning in the meeting against the very things that I am there to stand for
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it's just not right as I say if civil servants want to participate in their own time
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they're free to do that but the taxpayer shouldn't be paying for it I think it's very obvious
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that this must be a breach of impartiality and I think that's what the court is going to find in this case
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I really do So as Bedeva's advocate here the amounts of money involved I'm not sure what they are
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perhaps you can tell us, but I don't imagine they're vast in terms of government spending. But people might argue, oh, come on, the Christian Institute
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the Christian Church is in deep trouble in this country. Church attendance is falling across the board, particularly in the Anglican Church
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Haven't you got more important things to worry about? The Pride March, after all, generally is a happy-go-lucky family affair
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Yeah, so in terms of spending, we don't actually know the full amount of it, but I think that whatever they're spending, it's too much
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because it's spending money on promoting a particular political cause where they're meant to be impartial
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I think in terms of the church, I mean, I'm happy to debate the state of the church. Actually, there's quite a lot of indications that in churches like mine
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evangelical churches, attendance is going up, and that's great. And by the way, anybody who wants to come to church, you'd be very welcome
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But I really think that when it comes to the civil service
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who get to decide what information gets filtered through to ministers, who get to drive policy
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We need to have confidence that those people are being properly impartial
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that they're listening to all sides of an issue, that they're giving ministers all the information
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and that they're going to act fairly. And as I say the idea that they are officially signed up to a political movement and one which is so controversial now I mean the gender ideology stuff you know gender self
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and all of that, it's deeply unpopular with the public. And the idea that they're already in the column, they're already signed up to that set of
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propositions, I think it just destroys people's confidence that they're going to be doing
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their jobs properly. And I honestly think that the civil service will be better off and it will be better perceived
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if it just unhitches itself from these causes and really just sticks to the day job
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Simon Calvert, thank you so much for joining us this morning. And, Andrew, it does remind me of an experience that I had
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when I was an MP and I went to a meeting in Whitehall
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with a minister and a number of civil servants. And by that point, I had been speaking out
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against gender ideology in school for some time and I was known for doing so
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And in this meeting, every single one of the civil servants was wearing the trans lanyard, you know, the blue and yellow one
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indicating that they support the idea that men can become women. So basically stuff you empty
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So I don't know whether that was done on purpose to intimidate me. And that's kind of irrelevant how I felt
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But the point was there's absolutely no way civil servants who are willing to display their political commitment to trans ideology
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on their work lanyards are ever going to think about banning these kind of ideas
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I'm amazed that the Permanent Secretary in that Department of Ministry allows the officials to behave like that
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I know. That is outrageous. And I think that was insulting. Did you complain? No, I didn't
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Perhaps I should have done. I had enough to complain about. Yeah, well, outrageous
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The minister should have said something. Indeed. Well, flags are an expression of what side you are on
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Exactly. They're inherently political. That's the point. Now, we have to read these statements because you know how much I love them
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which is why Miriam gets to read them. Oh, thank you, Andrew. Our full focus is on delivering for working people
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raising their living standards, reducing hospital waiting lists, and putting more neighbourhood bobbies on the beat
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and growing our economy. To deliver that vital work, we provide an inclusive environment
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for all staff, boosting productivity and opening up opportunities across the country
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