Mick Hartley

Why is the government’s legal representative at the High Court arguing against the implementation of single-sex spaces, contrary to the its claimed position? I wondered about that yesterday, and now here’s Legal Feminist with the same question:

Lawyers in court act on the client’s instructions. Which part of government is instructing the lawyers to make these arguments? And why? Formally, it is the Minister for Women and Equalities (Ms Bridget Phillipson) who is responsible. She will surely have taken advice from the government’s lawyers, ultimately answerable to the Treasury Solicitor and the Attorney-General. That legal advice is, of course, privileged. But the actual arguments in court are open. They show a government arguing in contradiction to what the Supreme Court judgment says and doing so in a lower court which is bound to follow the Supreme Court’s judgment.

Why? Is this deliberate? Is this a misunderstanding? Is this an attempt to appease those Labour backbenchers who seem unwilling to accept the judgment and who want to water it down in some way? Or is it what might be termed the permafrost layer of management (whether in the civil service or the legal function) who are determined to frustrate the judgment or make it unclear or confusing, either because of their own personal position or ideological views or simply because they do not like it?  None of these considerations should play any part in the advice to Ministers or indeed in Ministers’ actions. Are they doing so here? 

This topic has been bedevilled by a continuing serious concern: the extent to which government (and other public bodies) have allowed a gross conflict of interest to arise, through their embrace of Stonewall “advice” (Stonewall are not lawyers) and membership of its schemes, and to continue, to the detriment of civil service duties of impartiality and professionalism….

Now we have government Ministers saying one thing to Parliament and government lawyers saying something inconsistent to the courts. This is unacceptable. Ministers need to clarify this – and without delay. The public and the courts deserve nothing less.