Law firm ‘covered up 2 sex pest reviews’

A LEADING human rights law firm co-founded by Cherie Blair has been accused of covering up two reports into sex assault claims against a top lawyer.

Matrix Chambers, which has been shortlisted for Chambers of the Year, is facing a ‘highly corrosive’ battle of the sexes.

It stands accused of keeping secret two inquiries into allegations that one of its male lawyers carried out a sexual assault on a female colleague while he was counsel of the national child abuse inquiry.

An investigation was ordered by Matrix last year when Ben Emmerson QC was accused by BBC’s Newsnight of groping a member of staff in a lift at the headquarters of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).

Mr Emmerson, who quit the inquiry last September shortly after being suspended over concerns about his ‘leadership’, was cleared three months later of any wrongdoing in a Matrix report by retired High Court judge Sir David Calvert-Smith.

But the chambers was accused of a cover-up after refusing to make its report public or even give it to the child abuse inquiry, which meant IICSA’s separate seven-month investigation into what happened was unable to say whether the claims were true. Then, following complaints from its female lawyers, Matrix commissioned another review, this time led by former judge Dame Laura Cox.

The Cox report into ‘the adequacy of Matrix rules, practices and procedures’ is understood to be critical of the legal approach and some of the findings of the Calvert-Smith investigation, but Matrix has emailed its members, gagging them from making any comment, saying it could be ‘highly corrosive’.

The IICSA said: ‘ The reports by Sir David Calvert-Smith and Dame Laura Cox are internal reviews commissioned by Matrix. The inquiry has not had sight of them.’ Matrix said it ‘ does not intend to make any public comment on what are plainly confidential internal matters’.

‘Highly corrosive’