Complaints against judge to be examined in U-turn

BBC

Complaints of misconduct against a judge are to be examined after a U-turn by a judicial watchdog.

The 10 complaints, spanning a seven-year period, were made against Philip Lancaster, an employment tribunal judge in Leeds.

The Judicial Conduct Investigations Office (JCIO) had previously dismissed most of the allegations against Lancaster without examining them.

However, after three of the complainants took legal action, the JCIO backed down and has now agreed to "reconsider those complaints".

One of the complainants, Alison McDermott, criticised the judicial authorities saying that as they had not taken any "meaningful action…others may potentially have been exposed to the same conduct".

The complainants alleged they suffered bullying, intimidation, banging of the table and/or excessive interruption during employment tribunal hearings presided over by Lancaster.

The JCIO dismissed most of the complaints for two main reasons.

In several cases it argued that as the alleged misconduct had taken place in the context of "case management" and it was beyond its powers to scrutinise them.

It added other complaints had been filed without a specific time for when the misconduct had allegedly occurred, even though the complainants had been denied transcripts of their hearings.

One complaint was dismissed due to insufficient evidence while a tenth was upheld, almost four years after it had been filed, and resulted in a reprimand for Lancaster.

Nine of the 10 complainants are female and three of them – McDermott, Dr Hinaa Toheed and Susannah Hickman-Gray – launched judicial review proceedings against the JCIO.

They argued the judicial watchdog was wrong to exclude conduct during "case management" and that it was "procedurally unfair" to exclude complaints issued without a specific time when transcripts or audio recordings had not been provided.

They also said the judiciary were wrong to consider each incident in isolation without considering their cumulative effect.

Ahead of a court hearing, the JCIO accepted the arguments and has agreed to investigate the complaints.

"If multiple complaints had been made about the same doctor, that would have raised alarm bells and led to an investigation," said Toheed, a GP.

"Yet despite repeated concerns about Judge Lancaster's conduct, he continued to preside over cases while complainants were battling simply to be heard."

The women are now raising serious questions about the role of Judge Barry Clarke, the President of Employment Tribunals in England and Wales.

McDermott and Toheed said he had been repeatedly told of an emerging pattern of complaints against Lancaster but took no meaningful action.

In a letter to Toheed earlier this year, Clarke wrote that in recommending Lancaster receive formal advice for his conduct in her hearing – the lowest form of reprimand – he took into account the judge's "previous good record."

"I cannot adequately describe the stress of receiving call after call from different women about Judge Lancaster, describing strikingly similar experiences in his courtroom," said McDermott.

"Now, after four years of raising concerns, the JCIO has finally accepted that these complaints must be properly investigated — but only after enormous stress, delay and expense. No justice system worthy of public confidence should operate like that."

The lawyer for the three women, Emily Soothill from Deighton, Pierce Glynn solicitors, said it was the first time the JCIO had had its interpretation of "judicial misconduct" challenged.

She said it was "crucial that the JCIO now undertakes a proper and lawful investigation into the numerous complaints which have been raised against Judge Lancaster… so that public confidence in how complaints against the judiciary are investigated can start to be restored."

In a statement, the JCIO said that it "accepted that it erred in rejecting or dismissing a number of complaints that it received about Employment Judge Lancaster in its initial consideration of those complaints under the Judicial Conduct Rules 2023".

It had, therefore, agreed to reconsider those complaints.

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