In Depth:  The Guardian

In August, lawyers representing Gareth Lee, the man behind the ‘gay cake’ row in Northern Ireland, announced they will take the UK Supreme Court to court challenging their ruling in favour of Ashers Bakery.

The European Court of Human Rights will be asked to overturn the ruling made in 2018, because they believe that baking the cake did not imply ‘the bakery support[ed] (expressly or implicitly) the message of the cake’.

In May, Labour accused the Conservative leadership hopeful Esther McVey of being unfit to be an MP after she repeated her view that parents should be allowed to take primary-aged children out of lessons on same-sex relationships.

Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, said McVey’s arguments in favour of letting parents take young children out of LGBT education were ‘illegal, immoral and deeply dangerous’.

Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, announced in late December that he had ordered an independent, global review into the persecution of Christians of all nationalities amid claims that not enough is being done to defend the rights of nearly 200 million Christians at risk of persecution today.

The unprecedented Foreign Office review will be led by the Bishop of Truro, the Right Revd Philip Mounstephen, and will make recommendations on the practical steps the Government can take to better support those under threat.

NHS England is to be taken to court by the UK’s equality watchdog for failing to offer fertility services to transgender patients, it was reported in early September.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a high-profile judicial review action, a legal manoeuvre that is likely to prove controversial at a time when the NHS is struggling to balance budgets and provide core services. Surgery to alter sex organs generally results in infertility.

The founders of a free school in Sunderland seem to have done a U-turn and accepted proposals to have it sponsored by an academy chain based 140 miles away, it was reported in November.

In October, Grindon Hall Christian School was opposed to the Department for Education’s attempt to impose the Stockport-based Bright Tribe chain on them. The founders had put out a statement saying the sponsor ‘had no record of improving schools’. They wrote to Lord Nash, the academies minister, with a six-page letter of concerns. But in late November, the school’s trustees, governors and principal wrote to parents, saying: ‘We believe that Bright Tribe sponsorship is the best way forward.’