'Stick to the day job!' Civil Service scolded as Christian charity launches legal action over pride parade

The People's Channel exclusively revealed that lawyers for The Christian Institute had lodged High Court papers commencing a legal challenge against the Prime Minister over "taxpayer-funded participation" in LGBTQ+ events.

The charity argues the "current practice of officially endorsing and funding participation during work time" while sporting "civil service pride" T-shirts and banners "breaches the law on civil service impartiality".

Detailing the legal case further, Mr Calvert told GB News: "I want to start actually by paying tribute to Linzi Smith, who sued our local police here at Northumbria Police over this exact issue. And she persuaded the court that it was a breach of impartiality duties for the police to be officially participating in pride marches.

"And so we are seeking to apply exactly the same principle, that there are laws which require civil servants to be impartial, guidance which says that you're not to favour particular interests - who could doubt that going on a pride march signals your support for that particular cause?"

He added: "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. But what happens is every year the civil service decides to allocate funding to pay for civil servants 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-shirts branded with civil service pride, we pay for banners."

Arguing the pride movement is "not what it used to be", Mr Calvert said: "If the idea that the taxpayer was paying for civil servants to attend a Just Stop Oil protest or something, people would be properly shocked by that, and the pride movement, whatever it used to be, is now clearly a very particular set of political propositions focused around gender ideology, opposing the Supreme Court ruling and so on.

"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?"

Recalling how political parties were "banned" from London Pride this year due to the "lack of support" for the LGBT community, he said: "Pride stands for a particular set of political ideas. Going back to the court ruling in Linzi Smith's case against Northumbria Constabulary, one of the things that the court found was that the pride march had a particular set of political demands.

"The London Pride march, which is the one presumably Whitehall civil servants take part in, they actually banned political parties from taking place this year, because they felt the mainstream political parties weren't sufficiently supportive of all of their demands. So I think it clearly is a political movement.

"It clearly does stand for a particular set of changes, and I engage with civil servants as a stakeholder. So if I'm going into meetings about the clash between sex realism and gender ideology or Christian views and the sort of the values of the pride movement, 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.

"By wearing pride lanyards in the meeting, they're effectively campaigning in the meeting against the very things that I am there to stand for. It's just not right."

Declaring his optimism that the courts will find the case to be a "breach of impartiality" by civil servants, Mr Calvert said: "If civil servants want to participate in their own time, they're free to do that, but the taxpayers shouldn't be paying for it.

"I think it's very obvious that this must be a breach of impartiality, and I think that's what the court is going to find in this case, I really do."

As host Andrew Pierce pressed Mr Calvert on whether the Christian Institute has "better things to do", he responded: "I think that whatever they're spending, it's too much because it's spending money on promoting a particular political cause where they're meant to be impartial.

"When it comes to the civil service, who get to decide what information gets filtered through to ministers, who get to drive policy, we need to have confidence that those people are being properly impartial, that they're listening to all sides of an issue, that they're giving ministers all the information 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 - the gender ideology stuff, self ID and all of that, it's deeply unpopular with the public."

He concluded: "And the idea that they're already in the column, they're already signed up to that set of propositions, I think it just destroys people's confidence that they're going to be doing their jobs properly. And I honestly think that the civil service will be better off, and it will be better perceived if it just unhitch itself from these causes and really just sticks to the day job."

In a statement, a Government spokesman told GB News: "Our full focus is on delivering for working people, raising their living standards, reducing hospital waiting lists and putting more neighbourhood bobbies on the beat and growing our economy to deliver that vital work.

"We provide an inclusive environment for all staff, boosting productivity and opening up opportunities across the country."

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