Allison Bailey v Stonewall - Employment Tribunal hearing Thread 9

[ickky]

The Tribunal started on 25th April at 10am. If you would like to view online you need to send a request for access as early as possible.

Send an email to

[email protected]

The subject heading of the email request should read

“MEDIA OR PUBLIC ACCESS REQUEST – Case number 2202172/2020 - Ms A Bailey – 25th April 2022.

Then ask for the pin for the online access.

You will be contacted with instructions on how to observe the hearing.

When joining the live tribunal please choose a non inflammatory/offensive name, everyone can see it in the chat - This is a court room, please behave accordingly.

The court chat function is there for official court purposes, not for observers, please don't use it unless you have a technical issue.

On the first page underneath where you put your screen name, select the video and mic that are not crossed out (top option), this is the courts vid and mic.
On the next page select NONE on the drop down windows for vid and mic, these are your own video and mic.

You must be muted so as to not disturb the hearing.

There is also live tweeting from

twitter.com/tribunaltweets

Abbreviations:
AB: Allison Bailey, claimant
BC: Ben Cooper QC, barrister for AB
SW = Stonewall Equality Limited (respondent 1)
IO = Ijeoma Omambala QC, senior counsel - barrister for SW
RW = Robin White junior counsel to SW - assisting IO
GC = Garden Court Chambers Limited (respondent 2) (GCC would be a better abbreviation)
AH = Andrew Hochhauser QC, senior counsel - barrister for GC
JR = Jane Russell junior counsel to GC - assisting AH
RM= Rajiv Menon QC & SH = Stephanie Harrison QC (jointly respondent 3 along with all members of GC except AB)
EJ = Employment Judge Goodman hearing the case
Panel = any one of the three panel members (EJ and two lay members)

Thread 1 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4529887-Allison-Bailey-v-Stonewall-Employment-Tribunal-hearing?

Thread 2 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4542466-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-2

Thread 3 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4545725-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-3

Thread 4 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4546945-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-4

Thread 5 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4548160-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-5

Thread 6 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4550451-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-6

Thread 7 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4551757-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-7

Thread 8 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4552521-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-8

Allison Bailey - claimant

Witnesses for the claimant:

Nic Williams - Fair Play for Women
A Woman's Place
FiLiA
Kate Harris - LGB Alliance

Witnesses for the respondents:

Stephen Lue - barrister for GCC
Kirrin Medcalfe - head of trans inclusion Stonewall
Sanjay Sood Smith - Stonewall
Shaan Knan - LGBT consortium - on STAG
Leslie Thomas - barrister at GCC
Rajiv Menon - joint head of chambers
Maya Sikand - barrister at GCC and in charge of writing report on AB/complaints
Mia Hakl-Law - HR senior for GCC
Judy Khan - barrister at GCC

Current Witness - Charlie Tennant - Clerk at GCC

To come

Luke Harvey - Clerk at GCC
Louise Hooper - Clerk at GCC
Stephanie Harrison - joint head of chambers
Michelle Brewer - barrister at GCC at time, now left and a judge

I have reported both my original post and the quoted post and asked for them to be deleted to maintain thread integrity. Huge apologies!

Thanks @TastefulRainbowUnicorn
Weird as he was speaking in the present tense about the seating arrangements of the clerks! I wish him luck as a freelance graphic designer, that's a tough gig.

Catching up, thanks for the new thread.

I just don't buy it. You're not telling me there wasn't loads of banter about what was going on, proving it is another thing of course.

Thank god that's all he is fiddling with, we had a trouser fly fiddler in Mayas hearing.

He has a magnificent beard, I love it.

Having worked in a place like that (as a student, I worked in the post room at a law firm) I absolutely don't believe that there was no gossip. As an underpaid under qualified person compared to the fee earners, you live for gossip

So in re-examination LH said there was just a single desk space between him and CT in the clerks' room. So yeah, no one picks up anything at all from what's going on at the next desk.

It is what makes the day bearable, especially when fairly young. Any gossip and people would flock to it like a shark scenting blood.

‘the clerks have mentioned that Allison had less solicitors asking for her or giving her work in general as a defence. Is that ever explained in anything? Is that racism in a wider context in law at play? Sexism? Homophobia?’

It’s entirely possible that that’s exactly what was happening. But I also think there’s something going on in the clerks’ office that we’re not seeing here.

Three white men clerking a team of barristers of nearly 200 people, clearly giving them all an income, and between them they could only manage to get a black female barrister one case in a year that was in line with her seniority?

I’m prepared to believe they didn’t care about her GC views. I still think they didn’t do their jobs.

Don't worry about it Lougle, normally sensible discussion of the backgrounds of professionals involved in an Employment Tribunal would be fine but shenanigans on social media, a warning by the judge, and other issues mean that we're being extra careful.

Snazzy glasses!

In the words of JK 'FFS'.

LouHoo looks nice.

Colin Cook is black though Tabby and isn't he the head honcho?

Current witness:
Louise Hooper - Member of Garden Court Chambers, area of practice - immigration law barrister
www.gardencourtchambers.co.uk/barristers/louise-hooper/sao
"Louise Hooper is an established public law, human rights and migration lawyer. Her practice over the last 20 years has involved a focus on human rights, equality and dignity.
She views strong commitment to and enforcement of universal human rights standards as fundamental to the rule of law and she is committed to holding those responsible for breaching the human rights of others to account. She has particular expertise in cases involving child, refugee and migrant rights, sex, gender, LGBTI+, trafficking and detention.
Her current interests relate to the human rights and ethics implications of new technologies and whether regulation can be effective in a global society.
She is researching issues including whether or not algorithms can ever be ‘fair’, the consequences of AI for public and private decision making and the adoption of new technologies for the purposes of immigration control and border management. Louise is registered with the Bar Council for Public Access work and advises individuals, companies and NGOs in this capacity.
Louise has worked extensively with the Council of Europe as an international expert.
This work has involved designing and developing offline and online training on the Istanbul Convention on Combatting Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, conducting baseline country evaluations of compliance with the Istanbul Convention and, most recently writing the guide to ‘Gender based asylum claims and non-refoulement: Articles 60 and 61 of the Istanbul Convention’.
She is the appointed international expert to the Drafting committee on Migrant Women of the Gender Equality Commission.
She co-authored the ICJ’s Practitioner Guide to Refugee Status Claims Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (2016) with Livio Zilli, Butterworths Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery: Law and Practice (for criminal practitioners) (1st Edition), contributor and reader for Legal Action Group’s Migrant Support Handbook (forthcoming).
She is a regular contributor to MacDonald’s Immigration Law and Practice (previously writing chapters on human rights, deportation, family migration and trafficking, currently working on the citizenship chapter for the 10th edition forthcoming in 2020)."

What is LH's role in all this?

why don't they ask any decent media company to sort out the audiovisual problems for all courts planning to do this? and train the key users and IT staff?

And who was the person who got the reported death threat mentioned?

I thought she was a clerk. Fuck sake, another amendment.

He is. He's been clerking for 40 years - man and boy.

‘Colin Cook is black though Tabby and isn't he the head honcho?’

Fair enough, that’s my assumption (clearly a wrong one). But I still think the fact that AB is a black woman is relevant. We know black women are stereotyped more often in particular ways: as being ‘difficult’, ‘angry’, or being expected to take on undesirable work that - frankly - white men wouldn’t be expected to want to do. If Colin Cook didn’t personally clerk AB and she was mainly clerked by CT and LH, I think it’s possible there was unconscious bias at play.

Surely to earn any barrister a full-time professional salary on this system you’d have to suggest them for hundreds of cases? Where are the opportunities for her at her level?

All the heads of chambers have been PoC as far as I’m aware?
(Judy Khan, Leslie someone, and someone Menon?) Seems like a diverse chambers to me.

And who was the person who got the reported death threat mentioned?

We don't know and it's best not to speculate. All we know is it was a witness.

What is LH's role in all this?

I believe that it was LoHo who suggested to the head honchos at GCC that GCC should issue a statement with regard to AB's tweets

If Colin Cook didn’t personally clerk AB and she was mainly clerked by CT and LH, I think it’s possible there was unconscious bias at play.

Could've been even if he did. We all know misogynoir is something quite specific to black women.

No gossip in chambers?: "Silk was commissioned by Jay Hunt, then-Controller of BBC One and Ben Stephenson, BBC Controller of Drama Commissioning, and started filming in July 2010. It is based on Moffat's experiences at the Bar. In an interview with The Guardian, he said "I want to tell it as it really is. The extreme pressure, the hard choices, the ethical dilemmas, the overlap between the personal and the professional, principles fought for and principles sacrificed, the Machiavellian politics, the sex, the drinking, the whole story—life at the bar is the richest possible drama territory." en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_(TV_series)#Origin