Mental Health, Law and Creating Inclusive Workplaces

Speaker: Regius Professor Mark Bell (Trinity College Dublin)
Chair: Professor Lizzie Barmes (Queen Mary University)
Admission: Free
Accreditation: This event is accredited with 1 CPD hour with the SRA and BSB
Series: Current Legal Problems 2015-16

About the lecture

A growing body of evidence has documented the major impact of mental health of labour market participation.

In the UK, this is the leading cause of sickness absence from work, while it has been identified internationally as a major reason why people leave employment and become reliant on welfare benefits.

Public Policy initiatives in recent years have sought to tackle this issue in various ways, such as improving occupational health services, social security reform, or anti-stigmatisation campaigns.

This talk will examine the role that law can play in creating workplaces that are inclusive of people with mental health problems.

It will examine evidence of how mental health impacts on working lives and reflect on the principals that should guide the law’s intervention in this field, taking a lead from the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

It will consider several aspects of employment law in order to reflect on the role that it could play in improving how the labour market responds to people with mental health problems.

About the speaker

Mark Bell is Regius Professor of Laws since 2015. Prior to his appointment at Trinity, he was a professor at the School of Law, University of Leicester, where he was also Head of the School of Law (2011-2014).

Mark conducts research in the areas of equality, work and migration.

He is the author of Racism and Equality in the European Union (OUP, 2008) and Anti-Discrimination Law and the European Union (OUP, 2002).

He is currently a member of the European Commission’s Network of Legal Experts in Gender Equality and Non-Discrimination, and the Berkeley Comparative Anti- Discrimination Law Study Group.

He is a committee member of the Employment Law Association of Ireland. He works regularly with a range of national and European NGOs dealing with equality issues, as well as international organisations.

In 2010/11 he worked with the international Labour Organisation to develop training on the protection of precarious workers, while in 2013 he delivered training on anti-discrimination law for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Trinity College Law Review.

About Current Legal Problems

The Current Legal Problems annual lecture series was established over sixty years ago. The lectures are public, delivered on a weekly basis and chaired by members of the judiciary.

The Current Legal Problems (CLP) annual volume is published on behalf of UCL Laws Oxford University Press, and features scholarly articles that offer a critical analysis of important current legal issues.

It covers all areas of legal scholarship and features a wide range of methodological approaches to law. With its emphasis on contemporary developments, CLP is a major point of reference for legal scholarship.

Find out more about CLP on the Oxford University Press website