Leading barrister fails in bid to keep sexual harassment tribunal private

A leading British criminal barrister will face a public disciplinary hearing after being accused of sexual harassment. The Bar Standards Board, the barristers’ regulator, described the claims on Tuesday as “exceptionally serious”. Jo Sidhu KC had asked for the misconduct hearing to be held in secret on the basis of a medical condition. He wanted the press and public barred from the five-person tribunal panel, with no reporting of his name or the charges against him. Tortoise, along with three other news outlets, successfully argued for the tribunal to be public and reportable. Four women, understood to be young lawyers, originally reported Sidhu to the Bar Standards Board and three have continued with their complaints. Their evidence will be heard over the next week.

The media argued that:

• The open justice principle is constitutionally important.
• There is a movement towards greater, not less, transparency in judicial and quasi-judicial hearings.
• It was already a matter of public record that Sidhu faced misconduct charges, reported in a number of news outlets over many months.
• Sidhu is a prominent figure in the profession, representing his colleagues on the national stage via the elected office of Chair of the Criminal Bar Association. As such, there was an enhanced public interest in the public being able to observe, and the media report, on misconduct charges against him.
• Proportionality matters. If for reasons of medical privacy the public and press needed to be excluded from certain parts of the hearing, it was right to admit them for any parts that did not include medically sensitive information.
• The tribunal did not have the power to ban reporting, only to ban press and public attendance at the misconduct hearing. The media could and would report should anyone choose to speak out, including complainants and witnesses. Allowing reporting of the full hearing would permit a rounded view of both the evidence against Sidhu, and of his defence.

The Bar Tribunal and Adjudication Service, which manages disciplinary hearings for the Bar, has not yet provided the media with a charge sheet setting out the specifics of the allegations against Sidhu.

On Tuesday afternoon, Sidhu applied for a ‘stay’ in the proceedings.

Fiona Horlick KC, acting for the regulator the Bar Standards Board, told the tribunal panel: “There is a public interest in there not being a stay.”

Pointing out that one of the women had been due to give her evidence on Tuesday, she said, “I want to stress the interests of the three complainants. They’ve been significantly affected by the respondent’s alleged behaviour. Whilst [the stay application] is not resolved they are in a state of stasis and it is in their interests that [the decision] is resolved now.”

The hearing continues.