Government continues to waste tax payers' money

Following recent news of a Gibraltar Appeal Court ruling on the on-going lesbian joint tenancy case, Equality Rights Group GGR has criticised what it calls “Government’s wasteful use of taxpayers’ money in pursuing court actions which, in the end, it will have to go back on.

“The facts are these: while government spends many thousands of pounds in preventing a gay couple from being able to occupy one flat jointly instead of being allocated two separate housing units as a couple of long-standing, they know as well as we do, that the EU will be introducing binding law which will make discrimination in housing illegal on the grounds of sexual orientation. In other words, government will have no choice in the matter in a few years’ time. The vast majority of Europeans today consider the kind of treatment being meted out by the Housing Allocations Committee to same-sex couples as unfair and unacceptable.

“Despite this, the Caruana government continues to pour big money into the defence of a position it is doomed to lose. What kind of reasoning is this when not so long ago we were being told by the Minister for Justice that the access of ordinary citizens to Legal Aid had to be re-defined and curtailed in order to save money?

“Something somewhere just does not fit in what appears, more and more, to be a government policy led by prejudice and homophobia.

“The rulings of the Courts must be respected at all times. However, judgments are subject to further appeal. GGR will continue to support this and any other same-sex individual or couple with a just cause in discrimination to take their complaint as far as the law permits.

“In this case, we look forward to the Court of Appeal’s recent ruling being overturned either by the Privy Council in the UK, or by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. We are confident this will turn out to be so. And even if it isn’t, in a few years’ time we will still live to see government obliged to change its policy by law, whether the present administration likes it or not. The only shame is that government should still insist on wasting citizens’ money.”

Government continues to waste tax payers' money

Following recent news of a Gibraltar Appeal Court ruling on the on-going lesbian joint tenancy case, Equality Rights Group GGR has criticised what it calls “Government’s wasteful use of taxpayers’ money in pursuing court actions which, in the end, it will have to go back on.

“The facts are these: while government spends many thousands of pounds in preventing a gay couple from being able to occupy one flat jointly instead of being allocated two separate housing units as a couple of long-standing, they know as well as we do, that the EU will be introducing binding law which will make discrimination in housing illegal on the grounds of sexual orientation. In other words, government will have no choice in the matter in a few years’ time. The vast majority of Europeans today consider the kind of treatment being meted out by the Housing Allocations Committee to same-sex couples as unfair and unacceptable.

“Despite this, the Caruana government continues to pour big money into the defence of a position it is doomed to lose. What kind of reasoning is this when not so long ago we were being told by the Minister for Justice that the access of ordinary citizens to Legal Aid had to be re-defined and curtailed in order to save money?

“Something somewhere just does not fit in what appears, more and more, to be a government policy led by prejudice and homophobia.

“The rulings of the Courts must be respected at all times. However, judgments are subject to further appeal. GGR will continue to support this and any other same-sex individual or couple with a just cause in discrimination to take their complaint as far as the law permits.

“In this case, we look forward to the Court of Appeal’s recent ruling being overturned either by the Privy Council in the UK, or by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. We are confident this will turn out to be so. And even if it isn’t, in a few years’ time we will still live to see government obliged to change its policy by law, whether the present administration likes it or not. The only shame is that government should still insist on wasting citizens’ money.”

Plans for new EU Directive - we criticise Gib government 'extravagance'

Equality Rights Group Chairman, Felix Alvarez (left), has welcomed news that MEPs in the EU’s Civil Liberties Committee have now formally backed plans for a Directive on multiple discriminations.

“Over the years, legislation on separate discriminations has been introduced and the EU and individual member states have been in the process for some time of bringing anti-discrimination measures together in a more coherent way,” commented Felix Alvarez, the Group’s Chairman.

“This, ofcourse, is ironic for us, since it is happening against a backdrop in Gibraltar where we hardly have any anti-discrimination law at all, and what there is, is woefully inadequate.”

“Of particular importance,” said Mr Alvarez, “is the fact that under the new Directive, governments will not be able to discriminate on housing against people whether disabled, gay, or across a range of categories.

“Government should take note. It is just 3 months since the Gibraltar courts ordered the Housing Committee to re-consider their discriminatory treatment of a lesbian couple regarding a joint tenancy, a decision they subsequently refused to change. The case went to appeal, at huge expense to the Gibraltar taxpayer. And it is likely to proceed further and further until exhausting the judicial process at Strasbourg.

“This indecent use of taxpayers’ money to simply delay the inevitable, only serves to emphasise the entrenchment of a Gibraltar government increasingly at odds with modern trends in social law.

“If we are to believe that government is serious about cutting down costs on litigation, this kind of spending is not only disproportionate, it is also extravagant. At the end of the day, we are talking about treating all citizens in a fair and equal way.”