Bar Council issues sexual harassment guidance while Baroness Hale says much more must be done

Chambers have been issued new guidance by the Bar Council in a move to ensure that any sexual harassment complaints are dealt with properly.

The guide, entitled ‘Tackling Sexual Harassment: Information for Chambers’, provides a clear and comprehensive definition of what constitutes sexual harassment and illustrates barristers’ responsibilities and regulatory requirements in several imaginary scenarios and examples of best practice.

Chantal-Aimée Doerries QC, chairman of the Bar, said: “We have a clear road map on what the Bar Council, as the profession’s representative body, can do to better support barristers and it is time to take action. This guide is another step in a series of support tools that the Bar Council is leading on.”

Fiona Jackson, vice-chair of the Bar Council's equality, diversity and social mobility committee, said: “The guide builds on our programme of equality and diversity support work and last year's ‘Snapshot: The Experience of Self-Employed Women at the Bar’. In addition, it contributes to our wider aim of relegating any residual pernicious sexual harassment of barristers, pupil barristers and staff to the past in order to ensure a level playing field in practice where all barristers can thrive and succeed to the highest levels. It underscores that harassment should not be tolerated in any circumstances and that complaints should be taken seriously and echoes the Bar Council’s ongoing commitment to protecting potentially more vulnerable members of chambers and ensuring that they feel supported when making complaints.”

Meanwhile, Baroness Hale, the only woman judge in the history of the Supreme Court, has reiterated her support for diversity targets to promote more women and people from BAME backgrounds to the bench. Stopping short of calling for quotas, Hale nevertheless reiterated her disagreement with her Supreme Court colleague Lord Sumption, who has previously said that women should be “patient” and that it would take another 50 years to achieve equality in the legal profession without undermining justice. Hale has repeatedly rubbished this breathtakingly backwards assertion and once again called for the profession to take active steps to stamp out structural unfairness.