Bik wrote:The court ruled citing the European Convention on Human Rights so presumably it could equally be applied here.
Unfortunately, the judge rejected the human rights arguments, and the case was won instead on a point of statutory construction of local government legislation.
Mr Justice Ouseley said: "A local authority has no power under section 111 of the Local Government Act 1972, or otherwise, to hold prayers as part of a formal local authority meeting, or to summon councillors to such a meeting at which prayers are on the agenda."
So the Goverment may well respond by legislating to explicitly allow councils to do this.
But the case does have a very useful impact in terms of consciousness raising.
