Allison Bailey v Stonewall - Employment Tribunal hearing Thread 12

[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

Thread 9 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4553181-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-9

Thread 10 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4553754-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-10

Thread 11 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4555145-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-11

Allison Bailey - claimant (4-9, 11-13 May)

Witnesses for the claimant:

Dr Nicola Williams - Fair Play for Women (29 April)
Dr Judith Green - A Woman's Place (29 April)
Kate Barker - LGB Alliance (3 May)
Lisa-Marie Taylor - FiLiA (4 May)

Witnesses for the respondents:

Stephen Lue - barrister for GCC (3-4 May)
Zainab Al-Farabi - ex Stonewall (10 May)
Kirrin Medcalf - head of trans inclusion Stonewall (10 May)
Leslie Thomas - barrister at GCC (13 May)
Sanjay Sood Smith - Stonewall (16 May)
Shaan Knan - LGBT consortium - on STAG (16 May)
Rajiv Menon - joint head of chambers (16-17 May)
Maya Sikand - barrister at GCC (17-18 May)
Mia Hakl-Law - HR senior for GCC (18 May)
Judy Khan - barrister at GCC (19-20 May)
Charlie Tennent - clerk at GCC (20 May)
Luke Harvey - clerk at GCC (20 May)
Louise Hooper - Barrister at GCC (20 May)
Marc Willers - Barrister at GCC (23 May)
Stephen Clark - Barrister at GCC (23 May)
Liz Davies - Barrister at GCC (23 May)
Katherine McGahy (24 May)
Tom Wainwright - Barrister at GCC (24 May)

To come:

Colin Cook - clerk at GCC (24 May)
David de Menezes - GCC, Head of Marketing
David Renton - barrister at GCC (20 May, to continue on 25th May)
Kathryn Cronin - barrister at GCC
Stephanie Harrison - joint head of chambers
Michelle Brewer - barrister at GCC at time, now left and a judge.

And Kathryn Cronin on Thursday too. A joint HoC until Jan 2017. Area of practice is immigration. Not sure what her significance is.

Stephanie Harrison is current joint HoC and was a senior barrister at the time of the alleged conduct. My memory isn’t fantastic about her exact involvement but I think she’s someone who could be argued to be ideologically against AB’s position.

SH is a member of the Management Board and E&D officer from 2018. Joint HoC 2020 and chair of Chambers from Jan 2021. Immigration, civil liberties and public law barrister.

Going back to CMs evidence. I was only following on TT and here but it came over that as a QC and member of Bar Council ethics board she either didn’t know, or care, about the EA2010 definitions of sex (M & F) and sexual orientation (same sex attracted). How would the panel view her answers that TW are lesbians against what the law actually says?

I feel like the evidence we've seen indicates that AB did suffer a detriment in the work she received, but through a silent gossippy wink-wink nudge-nudge nose-tapping sort way. The Heads of Chambers, some of the top QCs, Head of Marketing & Communications, Head of HR etc, and with support from the Bar Council Ethics Committee, all made it abundantly clear that they felt that AB and her views were beyond unacceptable. I think that this sentiment trickled down to the clerks, who may not have all have cared about the issues at all but did want to please the big-wigs; and to solicitors on a broader level, who I believe do have some say over the barristers they work with - all resulting in less work being offered to AB, because of her gender critical beliefs.

I had to miss all of today as I’ve been on a (very long) motorway journey but thank you everyone on here for a truly jaw-dropping, blood-pressure-raising account. It’s been enraging and at times scarcely believable.

I can watch tomorrow, but I’m honestly not sure I’ll be able to take it after today.

Tasteful Rainbow Unicorn
I don't see how "Allison's allocated work dropped more than any other barrister's, and that's got absolutely nothing to do with the way half of Chambers were seething with rage at her" is more likely than "Actually, there is a connection between the extreme animosity against Allison and the drop off in work she received."

I think because there is another plausible argument: "Allison specialised in a niche area. Less work of that type was available in 2019 (possibly because of legal aid changes) so it was hard to find work that she both wanted to do and would be chosen by the ?solicitor to do. We offered her smaller pieces of work to give her a foot in the door with new clients, but she turned this down."

If GCC had bothered using their shiny new software and/or provided the spreadsheets in disclosure, it would be easier to see if that narrative had merit. (And it's tempting to infer that not including it means they are covering something up.) But without any evidence either way, it's hard to say that anyone deliberately withheld work from Allison.

By contrast, Sonia Appleby was able to prove a similar kind of detriment because at least 2 witnesses testified that senior leadership figures had told them not to speak to her (in her role as safeguarding lead) about safeguarding concerns.

Stephanie Harrison contacted CM at the Bar Standards Ethics Committee to obtain her informal opinion on AB's tweets, but did not share AB's 32-page defence/substantiation of the tweets.

I’ll be dipping in and out tomorrow but have a pretty busy day with actually having to talk to people instead of admin, annoyingly!

Had to dip in and out today but did any of the clerks ever answer why AB wasn’t given her practice review?

Thank you 🙂

I'm really quite annoyed that they don't start each session with a recap, you know the kind of thing - "PREVIOUSLY on Employment Tribunal...."

No, it wasn't brought up today. I don't think the previous clerks said why either.

Is she the one who should have refused herself from the investigation? Or was that someone else? She interfered a lot in the investigation IIRC, giving only partial information to CM, changing the wording in the conclusions in the report etc.

She's definitely ideologically opposed to AB.

That was Leslie Thomas, I think.

Interesting. But YES!

They really should! 😂

Just remembered another piece of the puzzle - Allison initially set up a crowdfunder via CrowdJustice. Hit its target really, really quickly and was then frozen and removed, before being put back a few days later. They really tried to not let it get to this point didn't they?

static.crowdjustice.com/CrowdJustice_statement.pdf

As I said at the last thread before I realised that the action had moved here (belated thanks, iccky!), at least a hailstorm makes a change from a Twitter storm though I hope that BC's support wren was OK.

That's right.

It's hard to keep up with it all.

Crazylazydayz · Today 16:51

Going back to CMs evidence. I was only following on TT and here but it came over that as a QC and member of Bar Council ethics board she either didn’t know, or care, about the EA2010 definitions of sex (M & F) and sexual orientation (same sex attracted). How would the panel view her answers that TW are lesbians against what the law actually says?

I was tempted to post earlier, then I was tempted to start a new thread, then you posted this.

Is there any good reason for NOT reporting people to chambers / BSB for being deeply misogynistic and homophobic? For being concerned that they are unlikely to be able to uphold the EA 2010 in their working lives given that they think people who believe in protections for women and people with a sexual orientation is hateful bigotry.

Obviously fear of being outed and shamed on social media by a TRA who sees the complaint, but other than fear is there any reason not to report these people?

Just before I had to leave for a meeting there was a point about taking small cases to fill the diary and that CC would move if necessary (if something better came up essentially). BC said that it is against the code of conduct for a barrister to do that having agreed to take the case. What happened next? Tribunal Tweets doesn’t say, but it seemed like quite a significant point to me. Is it the case?

Things still unresolved here.

If homosexuality is like apartheid, is heterosexuality also failing to de-segregate ones body for availability to others on an equal opportunities basis? 🤔

we should not lose sight of the fact that, once a tweet from GCC saying that Allison is going to be investigated is out in the public domain, it must have had a detrimental effect on her, and the work coming by her.

If I know about it, I’m damn sure the community of solicitors do. And knew about it immediately

Just wondering which of our dramatis personae have ever read here, or will do so in the future. Would love to picture Employment Judge Goodman, after this is done (as I imagine she wouldn't feel as right reading here until afterwards, though what would I know?) googling her name and finding us. After presiding over an ET with ~200 observers, and which involved a crowd funded half million, wouldn't you be curious if you were her? Of course we may not be quite such fans then, if she's just ruled against AB, as we are now. But I think we'd respect her professionalism even so, so, welcome EJG, and do join us as anonymously as you like. Assuming you are not already a regular, of course...