"Why was he talking about Ms Hall in the 3rd person when she was addressing him directly - is that a formal meeting etiquette thing?"
It is even more than that. "Speaking through the Chair" (that sounds sooo bizarre!) is a convention that might be in the Standing Orders of a committee or meeting.
It aims to enable the Chair to retain control of the meeting and deter participants from addressing each other directly. When it breaks down you can get people essentially having a private conversation in public or speaking over each other or shouting at each other.
I used to regularly chair biggish union meetings of 30-50 mainly men and these conventions help participants to self-regulate but can also be called upon by the Chair if order needs to be restored. It is better when they are written into Standing Orders so everyone knows the rules.
It impossible to interpret the formality of interactions between SK, SH and the Chair in that clip without knowing how things normally go in those meetings, ie. whether SK and others normally conduct themselves so formally, or whether SH's manner of debate is more representative; whether the Chair is normally so "hands off" or if he was giving SH unusual latitude to question SK directly.
IMHO what is more revealing than the transcript is watching the video to see how SK conducts himself.
It is inconceivable that he does not understand what SH is talking about.
Whatever his motivation, he plays it completely dead-pan and takes no responsibility for the "misunderstanding" and his claimed lack of comprehension.
It is obvious that SK is lying and being disrespectful to SH. He is doing this "through the Chair" but the Chair does not intervene.
The Chairperson is either complicit or is afraid of getting drawn in to what I suspect is SK's trap, ie.saying any of the words that SK knows SH is avoiding: Pakistani, Muslim or South Asian.
If those words had been said, would they have broken the spell? Or would SK have continued "playing the daft lad"? Would it have triggered accusations of racism and Islamophobia, or a diversion into statistics?
It is hard not to see SH as playing safe in order to avoid SK taking the chance to express outrage, smear her - and still not answer the question.
Without knowing the exact dynamics and who all the parties are, including everyone else at the meeting, it is a horrifying illustration of the local council and police culture that allowed the Grooming/Rape Gangs to thrive for decades.
It could not be better scripted and acted because the script writer and the actor playing SK would be excoriated for racist stereotyping.
What strikes me as misogynistic is the studied, deniable insolence in the way SK responds to SH's questions. However, maybe he does the same with men in positions of authority who are required and entitled to hold him to account?