So she decided to fight back.
But first she wrote to Fiona Ryland, the government chief people officer, to say principles mattered more to her than money. If DCMS and DSIT admitted their gender guidance was illegal and offered to revise it, Frances would settle in return for a decent job reference and £1.
This was declined and the case rumbled on, until this week she received an exceptional payout of almost £117,000 net. Why did Whitehall fold? Because the case had passed from HR — which still operates under Stonewall law, as if the Forstater ruling never happened — to government lawyers who saw they would lose, and that senior civil servants would have to explain at a public tribunal what Frances calls a “politicised climate of fear”. Compelling two permanent secretaries, Susannah Storey and Sarah Munby, to make a joint statement smacks of ministerial frustration: sort this out, don’t do it again.
Because all of it is madness. Why was each department allowed to make up its own gender policy rather than adhere to one central guide based upon a clear, legal reading of the Equality Act? Why aren’t civil servants promoted on the basis of talent, not an ideological test of whether they can recite the “correct” EDI dictums? Why are some government departments, including the DCMS, still members of Stonewall’s Diversity Champions scheme, shelling out scant public funds to win gold stars for policies that are both illegal and ridiculous, such as erasing the word “mother” from government documents on maternity rights?
This is not only a Labour problem: Eleanor Frances began her ordeal when the culture secretary was Nadine Dorries. It is about unaccountable institutions with staff who see themselves as activists, not public servants; who believe they know better than the law or the voters who pay their wages. Frances sacrificed a promising civil service career to bring this farrago into the spotlight — and she would have done it for just a quid.
Institutions like the Civil Service unfortunately attract and promote the sort of people who keep their heads down, don't make trouble, and get ahead by playing the game. As such they're ripe for exploitation by these of-the-moment social movements, like DEI in general and gender woo in particular, that the ambitious can embrace and promote with enthusiasm. Thank god then for the awkward ones.
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