During my time as an employment lawyer, I used to find cases involving bullying at work some of the most difficult to deal with. More often than not, they would end with my telling a client that there is no law against being bullied at work.

My clients would usually begin talking about their employment in calm and measured tones, but almost inevitably, after some time, they would begin to weep as they recalled the incidents of humiliation and harassment, which became the subsequent basis of a case of depression or resignation.

In September this year, the Chartered Management Institute published its research into bullying in the workplace. The survey, which questioned 512 executives in public and private sector organisations, identified psychological intimidation as the biggest problem and found that 39 per cent of all managers have been bullied in the past three years. Middle managers are the most bullied, with almost half (49 per cent) having suffered.

Whilst managers are often the victims of bullying, they also breed the greatest number of perpetrators. A recent TUC survey of 5,300 public, private and voluntary sector employees found that in most cases, 75 per cent, a manager was identified as the bully. The report also looked into the cost to industry, noting that workplace bullying contributes to the loss of 18 million working days every year.

Few of the bullying cases which came across my desk ended up with any kind of satisfactory resolution. Usually the bully knew just when to stop and would make sure that the kind of incidents involved were by themselves sufficiently low level to be way below the line of misconduct laid down by most firms. The cumulative effect of the repetition of those incidents, however, left their victims in a terrible state reminiscent of Chinese water torture - never quite knowing when the next insult, threat or insinuation might come.

It is now over a decade since the last legislative attempt to outlaw bullying in the workplace was lost to Parliamentary time. Since the failure of the Dignity At Work Bill to make it onto the statue books, thousands of careers have been lost and lives destroyed. Doubtless the reintroduction of such measures would be greeted by naysayers as more red tape or the sign of increased nannying from an interfering state.

Yet, without action, the workplace misery of countless people will continue as the bullies grow in confidence and employers turn a blind eye in the hope that this will be just another of those problems which might go away. In the meantime, the cost of more ruined lives increases daily as the power of the workplace bully is left unchecked.