Robin Allen QC (1969, PPE) was shortlisted, with Dee Masters, for the CogX Global Leadership Award 2021. Over the past year, they have been curating and delivering a course for regulators in the UK on Artificial Intelligence and its potential to discriminate for the Council of Europe and CDEI. The course will soon be rolled out to other countries in the Council of Europe jurisdiction. They have also published a legal opinion for the TUC on the impact of Artificial Intelligence and technology on the employment relationship making detailed recommendations for legal reform.

Mr Allen’s Hamlyn Lectures was published last October by Cambridge Unversity Press under the title Making Comparisons in Equality Law. The book examines the changing way men and women’s work has been compared over the last 100 years, demonstrating the importance of understanding the framework for comparison. With these insights, he addresses contemporary problems of age discrimination and conflict of equality rights.

He also authored a report with Dee Masters at the interface of artificial intelligence and equality law, “Regulating for an Equal AI: A New Role for Equality Bodies: Meeting the new challenges to equality and non-discrimination from increased digitisation and the use of Artificial Intelligence”, which was published with a Preface by the European Commissioner for Equalities, Commissioner Dalli, in June 2020.

Robin Allen QC was previously Head of Cloisters and specialises in employment, equality, discrimination and human rights, public law and local authority work. In 2012 he was Chambers and Partners’ “Employment Law QC of the Year”, for the second time. He acted as Counsel for the Equality and Human Rights Commission in Oct 2009 when the BNP were forced to amend their constitution to allow non-white people to join. Legal 500 rates him as a Tier 1 Employment Law Silk and he has twice been Chambers and Partners’ “Employment Law QC of the Year”. He frequently appears in the Supreme Court on high-profile human rights test cases. He is the Chair of the Equality and Diversity Committee of the Bar and is known for his contribution to the implementation of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Published: 2 November 2021

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