Letter to First Minister – Ministerial Code breach
We’ve been here before. Back in 2022, the Scottish Government spun the Parliament one story – that issuing Gender Recognition Certificates on the basis of self-identification of sex would not affect women’s rights or access to single-sex provision under the Equality Act – while simultaneously presenting the opposite position to the Court of Session, namely that GRCs were of the utmost importance and granted rights to access women’s spaces, including women’s representation on public boards.
Since last April we have repeatedly heard that the Scottish Government “fully accept the Supreme Court’s judgment” and is doing the detailed work necessary to comply with the Equality Act. Most recently, Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Angela Constance confirmed to Parliament.
[T]he Scottish Prison Service, as a public body, is required to comply with the Equality Act 2010 and other legislation, as are ministers.
,,,
[T]here is, right across Government, a clear commitment to comply with the law, which includes equality legislation.
The Government has clearly stated that it accepts the ruling from the Supreme Court. As previous updates by colleagues have confirmed, a breadth and depth of work is taking place to review policies and practices across the piece, which is obviously applicable to the justice system.
and the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Neil Gray, subsequently said “Again, the Scottish Government accepts the Supreme Court ruling. We accept that judgment and are taking forward the detailed work that is necessary as a consequence.”
However, far from accepting the Supreme Court judgment, the Scottish Ministers are currently in court actively challenging it. The Ministers have refused to remove male prisoners from the female estate and claim it “does not go against the grain of the Equality Act” for single-sex services to be “”primarily” (rather than exclusively) for persons of the same sex”, and are asking the court to rule that the Supreme Court judgment is incompatible with the Human Rights Act. This legal argument is the precise opposite of “acceptance”.
As the Ministers statements were made to Parliament after their legal defence was submitted to the court, there is no excuse that they inadvertently misled Parliament – we would contend that both Cabinet Secretaries were knowingly and deliberately untruthful and, as such, breached the Ministerial Code. We sent the following letter to the First Minister on 15 December 2025:
View letter as a PDF
We were about to conclude this post with the wry observation that the First Minister himself had not dared to claim that the Scottish Government accepts the Supreme Court judgment, at least not since last April, when we received the following letter. It seems Mr Swinney is indeed bold enough to repeat the lie. The question is: will he be bold enough to publish the Scottish Ministers’ written submissions to the court so we can all judge for ourselves?
View letter from the First Minister as a PDF I View our response as a PDF
Update: This has now been covered in today’s Times: SNP in secret attempt to challenge Supreme Court ruling on sex