West Midlands Ambulance Service said on Tuesday it will not take part in Birmingham Pride this Saturday and Sunday after taking legal advice that attendance as a public body could breach the political impartiality it is required to keep. The decision drew a sharp response from Mayor Richard Parker, who said he was struggling to accept that showing up for LGBTQ+ staff and patients could be treated as a political act.
The service said taking part could create a reasonable perception that it actively supported specific views and that would be contrary to the protected beliefs of other people. It said it remained fully supportive of staff who belong to the LGBTQIA+ community and would continue to support them taking part in other events that meet the public sector equality duty. Parker said in a statement on Friday that Pride was a community event where people go to celebrate who they are, see their neighbours and feel part of something, adding that it mattered. He also said he respected public bodies taking legal obligations seriously, but found it harder to accept that support for LGBTQ+ staff and patients was somehow political.
The row lands as organisers expect more than 75,000 people in the city for the event, which has become one of Birmingham’s biggest annual gatherings. Birmingham Pride has hosted a ticketed music festival at Smithfield since 2021, and last year organisers barred some representatives of political parties from attending after a Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of a woman. That backdrop makes the ambulance service’s withdrawal more sensitive, because it cuts across a weekend that is meant to be both a celebration and a public statement of inclusion.
West Midlands Ambulance Service said the issue would be kept under review for next and future years, leaving open the possibility of a return if its legal advice changes. For now, though, the service has drawn a line between neutrality and visibility, and Parker’s criticism goes to the heart of that choice: whether a public body can stand with a community at Pride without being seen to take sides.
