Scottish Parliament staff banned from wearing rainbow lanyard

Scottish Parliament staff are no longer allowed to wear rainbow lanyards - or other accessories that show support for social movements - at Holyrood.

All staff must now wear a generic purple lanyard with immediate effect.

Claire Baker, an MSP who sits on the Scottish Parliament's Corporate Body (SPCB), announced the changes in the Holyrood chamber earlier.

A parliament spokesperson said: "This decision will help minimise the risk of perceived bias."

They added: "It will also help avoid any potential misperception over the absolute impartiality of all Scottish parliamentary staff."

The changes will apply to staff and officials who work directly for the Scottish Parliament. It will not affect MSPs or their staff.

The Scottish Parliament issued an apology in November 2022 after a woman was ejected from a committee meeting for refusing to remove a scarf in suffragette colours.

An email has been sent to parliament staff saying "staff must wear a parliament-issued purple lanyard and remove pins and badges showing support for social movements and towards campaigns or organisations."

It went on to say that changes would "minimise the risk of perceived bias and avoid any perception that wearing such items may be influencing our own decision-making."

Staff will be permitted to continue wearing a badge that shows their pronouns. Poppies can still be worn as Poppy Scotland is the sole charity recognise by the SPCB.

The rainbow scheme was introduced in 2017 due to requests from LGBT+ colleagues in parliament.

Jamie Greene MSP, who is co-convener of Holyrood's cross party LGBT group, said it was "incredibly hard" to police what constitutes promoting political or societal causes.

He said: "Like flags, lanyard-gate is new identity politics battle. Sadly it seems that in trying to keep everyone happy they're keeping no one happy.

"The new parliamentary authority rules designed to create fairness and equality have managed to achieve quite the opposite. Either let everyone wear whatever they feel comfortable with, assuming it's not offensive or illegal, or let no-one wear anything non standard at all."