The deputy president of the UK Supreme Court has said that Christians with traditional beliefs should be given “reasonable accomodation” in law.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Baroness Hale, Britain’s most senior female judge, said Britain was “less respectful” towards people with religious views than many other countries, despite its long Christian tradition.

During a lecture she delivered at Yale Law School in America, Baroness Hale said that Christianity should not receive “special” protection under the law, and said that in her view a case where two Christian couples who owned B&Bs were sued for refusing to let double beds to gay people was rightly decided, because Christians should not be able to “pick and choose” which laws to obey.

However, she also called for a general re-examination of the legal approach to religion. “It is not difficult to see why Christians feel that their beliefs are not being respected” she said. “Other religions with stricter dress codes or dietary laws are demanding concessions which Christians feel that it is harder to claim because they cannot point to equivalent requirements.

“It is hard to believe that the hard-line EU law approach to direct discrimination can be sustainable in the long run.”