Public AffairsI have been involved since the 1970s in race relations issues, including with the Runneymede Trust a charity supporting improvement of race relations. I wrote the Fabian pamphlet Race & Affirmative Action. I maintain a keen interest in equal opportunities, including opening access to universities and the professions and was a member for eight years of the Bar Council Race Relations Committee.
I have been in turn a Member of the Committee of the Industrial Law Society the Employment Law Association and Honorary Legal Advisor at a London Legal Advice Centre for over ten years, where I did a weekly evening legal advice clinic. I have more recently lectured to CABx and carried out work for the Bar Pro Bono Unit and the Employment Law Advice and Advocacy Scheme. I was the Honorary Legal Adviser to Public Concern at Work, the whistleblowers charity between 1999 and 2006.
Between 2001-2003 I sat on the Home Office Task Force on Human Rights which was the government body which considered the most appropriate way to introduce the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law which ultimately became the Human Rights Act.
From 2001 to 5 I was a Member of Standard Board for England (the regulator of ethical standards in local government). This involved laying down guidance and frameworks, helping to run an organisation with a budget of about £10m per year and some 80 staff members, and supervising its legal strategy
In 2005 I was elected as a Bencher of Middle Temple and I am a member of its Estates Committee in which I help to set the policy for the property owned by Middle Temple.
I regularly advise the Number 10 Policy Unit and BERR (formerly DTI) on trade union issues.
I am a Chair of Bar Disciplinary Panels.
I have been involved in fund raising for several organisations, most recently Neve Shalom an intercommunal village and school near Jerusalem which promotes Arab-Jewish understanding .
