Complaints against judge to be examined in U-turn

Complaints against judge to be examined in U-turn34 minutes agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleMichael BuchananSocial affairs correspondentBBCSeveral women have complained about the behaviour of Judge Philip LancasterComplaints 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...