However, the court
rejected claims that saying the prayers discriminates against, or breaches the
human rights of, atheists.

The judge in the
case, Mr Justice Ouseley, said there is no law that gives councils the power to
formally begins their meetings with a prayer.

But critics hit back,
saying the ruling also means a council has no power to formally start its
meetings with the national anthem.

In December the head
of the Equality Commission, Trevor Phillips, said he ‘dropped his coffee’ when
he heard the case was being taken to court, calling it “nonsense on
stilts”.

Today’s ruling only
affects the formal meetings of local government, and does not stop councils from
holding prayers outside of that setting if they wish to do
so.

The practice of
saying prayers at Bideford Town Council meetings is understood to date back to
the days of Queen Elizabeth the First. The Council has, recently, twice voted in
support of continuing with the prayers.

Individual
councillors were free to not take part in the prayers if they wished, and the
register of attendance was not taken until after the prayers had
finished.

Nevertheless, a court
case was brought by the National Secular Society and a secularist former
councillor, Mr Clive Bone, against Bideford Town
Council.

The claimants’ legal
case rested on three arguments: that the prayers were discriminatory against
atheist councillors, the prayers were a breach of human rights laws, and that
the council had no lawful authority to hold prayers as part of its formal
meetings.

The judge rejected
the first two arguments, but ruled: “The saying of prayers as part of the formal
meeting of a Council is not lawful under s111 of the Local Government Act 1972,
and there is no statutory power permitting the practice to
continue.”

The Act does allow
councils to do anything that “facilitates, or is conducive or is incidental” to
a council’s functions, but Mr Justice Ouseley ruled that the saying of prayers
at formal meetings does not fall within that
provision.

If councillors are
not compelled to pray, the judge reasoned, then prayers cannot be an essential
part of a council’s functions and therefore should not be part of the formal
council meeting.

The decision was
criticised by The Christian Institute – a national charity that defends
religious liberty and underwrote Bideford Council’s legal
costs.

Institute spokesman
Simon Calvert said: “We welcome the finding that the saying of prayers isn’t
discriminatory, or a breach of equality laws, or human rights
laws.

“But it is
extraordinary to rule that councils have no lawful authority to choose, if they
so wish, to start their formal meetings with prayers. That is simply
wrong.

“The logic of the
ruling is that councils would also be going beyond the law if they took a vote
and decided to start each formal council meeting with the national
anthem.

“There is no way that
Parliament, when it passed the Local Government Act 40 years ago, intended it to
be used to outlaw prayers.

“This case was
brought by a campaign group that wants to drive Christianity out of public life,
and the High Court has today given them great encouragement to take matters
further.

“It is high time
Parliament put a stop to this assault upon our national heritage. What’s next?
Will prayers at the cenotaph end up in court?

“What about local
councils that wish to formally mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee as part of their
official meeting? Is that now unlawful too?”