Employment judge accused of bullying women

One woman said that Judge Philip Lancaster shouted at her at least 16 times. The women told the BBC that they had all lost cases heard in Leeds before Judge Lancaster.

Dr Hinaa Toheed appeared before him at a tribunal in February 2022 in a maternity discrimination case that she brought against her former business partner.

The judge called her an “omnishambles”.

He also took over cross-examining her from the barrister representing her former partner and attempted to bully her into making points supporting her opponent’s case.

“If I didn’t agree with anything that he said, he would shout at me,” she said.

Dr Toheed lost the case and is appealing. She complained about the judge, accusing him of “an inappropriately hostile attitude” towards her.

Another woman, Andra, who is Romanian, said she had a similarly unpleasant experience with the judge in a case in which she represented her partner over allegations of racial discrimination.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been treated like that in my life,” she said.

“He literally interrupted me whenever I was asking any questions, saying it’s either irrelevant, or I shouldn’t ask this today, I should put it to another witness, not this witness. And then when we got to the other witness, he would say: ‘Why didn’t you ask the other witness yesterday?’”

A new hearing is to take place after an appeal tribunal found that there had been “serious material procedural irregularities” at the hearing, including “a significant number of occasions when the judge intervened to prevent questioning of the respondent’s witnesses”.

The Courts and Tribunals Judiciary refused to provide a comment in response to the allegations.