Rainbow lanyards don't bother me, Grant Shapps says after 'common sense minister' urges crackdown

Defence Secretary Grant Shapps on Tuesday slapped down a call from a fellow minister to ban “political” lanyards in Whitehall.

So-called “common sense minister” Esther McVey said civil servants’ lanyards should not be a “random pick and mix” but a “standard design”.

But asked whether he would order a Minister of Defence bureaucrat to take off a rainbow lanyard in support of gay rights, Mr Shapps said: “Personally I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.

“But I do think, and this is where I think Esther McVey has a point, that what we want is our civil servants to be getting on with the main job,” he said on Times Radio.

“And the main job is to serve the department they work for, in my case Defence, but across Whitehall.”

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman denied any rift in the Government.

“The PM absolutely supports the minister in her work on this issue as well as the wider issue of the speech yesterday,” he told reporters, adding that further guidance would be released later.

The spokesman added: “The point she was making is that political activism should not be present within the Civil Service. Political statements should be left at home.”

In a speech on Monday, Ms McVey rejected the “inappropriate backdoor politicisation” of Whitehall as she vowed to end spending on external equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) contracts without an explicit sign-off from a minister, and no more EDI-focused Whitehall jobs outside human resources.

She added: “Working in the Civil Service is all about leaving your political views at the building entrance, and trying to introduce them by the back door via lanyards should not happen.”

The minister’s appointment by Rishi Sunak was widely seen as a bid to sharpen political dividing lines with Labour as the Conservatives wage a “war on woke” ahead of a general election this year.

But Ms McVey’s comments drew condemnation including from the Tory leader of the London Assembly, Andrew Boff, who tweeted: “You can take my lanyard from my cold dead neck.”

Kezia Dugdale, the former Scottish Labour leader, told Times Radio: “Asking people to take their [rainbow] lanyard off is like taking a welcome sign out of a window.”

She said that recent guidance on the same lines to staffers from the Scottish Parliament, which was highlighted by No10, was a “such a retrograde step”.

"This isn't a cause. This is who I am. Would you ask a Christian to take off a cross of a necklace?” Ms Dugdale added. “It's just a sign. It's a symbol of who I am. It's part of my identity."

Mr Shapps stressed that beyond the lanyard debate: “I’m also interested in making sure we have an efficient Civil Service, which I have to say has become a lot larger after Covid, and it hasn’t shrunk back down.”

He said his focus remained on finding savings in the MoD to help eliminate 72,000 civil service roles across Whitehall to get the bureaucracy back down to pre-pandemic levels.

That would help pay for a big boost in defence spending to 2.5% of GDP and fund a new fleet of Royal Navy warships, he said.