LONDON (Within The Law) - The Bar Standards Board says it will ‘reflect’ on the duty of barristers to report harassment and bullying as a data shows current methods are proving ineffective.
Neither The Bar Council’s Talk to Spot app or the pilot harassment support schemes approved by the BSB have seen much use. Figures released last week showed the BSB handled just 15 cases relating to sexual harassment in the year to March 2020, a tiny uptick from nine in each of the previous two years.
Papers produced before last week’s meeting of the full board of the BSB said:
“We are in the process of formulating new recommendations to help tackle bullying and harassment at the Bar, and we intend to engage with stakeholders – most likely including roundtables – about these during the first half of 2021.”
However, as the board heard at the meeting stakeholders were split on barristers duty to report harassment.
“While some stakeholders support the existing duty and think it is helpful in combatting inappropriate behaviour,” it said, “others feel that the duty to report has a chilling effect, preventing victims from seeking advice and support within their workplace and decreasing the likelihood of them reporting harassment to the BSB.”
Over the past couple of years, the BSB has started a number of pilot harassment support schemes to try and create a safer environment for people to report instances of bullying. However, assessments of the schemes show there has been ‘no marked increase’ in reports of harassment.
Take-up has also been slow of the BSB’s Talk to Spot app, an anonymous reporting tool launched in September.
Bullying has been a growing problem within the legal profession. A report last year showed that people tended to put up with bullying with pupils suffering the most.
Bullying at the Bar was perceived to be tolerated “to a certain extent” due to its “adversarial, male-dominated culture and competitive nature”.
It said a lack of formal management meant cases of discrimination and bullying slipped through the net.
Given the ongoing problem with bullying and harassment and the failure of projects designed to solve the issue the board was told that “reflecting on the duty to report will therefore be a priority in taking forward the anti-harassment agenda and we hope to issue a survey on this issue in the first half of 2021.”
(Written by Tom Cropper, Edited by Klaudia Fior)