Kelly v Leonardo Employment Tribunal Thread 4

[ickky]

The Tribunal has now finished and we await the judgement.

Abbreviations:

C or MK - Claimant, Maria Kelly
NC - Naomi Cunningham, barrister for C
KW - Katy Wedderburn, solicitor for C
R or L - Respondent. Leonardo UK
ST - Susanne Tanner KC, barrister for R
J - Judge
P - Panel member
GC - gender critical
GI - gender identity
AL - Andrew R Letton VP People Shared Services Leonardo - respondent witness

Tribunal Tweets coverage here

https://tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/kelly-vs-leonardo-uk-ltd

Thread 1 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5416903-kelly-v-leonardo-employment-tribunal-29th-september-10am?page=1

Thread 2 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5420656-kelly-v-leonardo-employment-tribunal-thread-2

Thread 3
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5421183-kelly-v-leonardo-employment-tribunal-thread-3

Thank you. I don’t think people realise how bad school designs have become.

This is why we need regulations for toilets that cover schools, workplaces and venues, incorporated into a single building regulations document.

Yes - and I did not realise how important it is!

Thanks to everyone for raising it and sharing experiences, As I don’t have direct experience of secondary schools I wouldn’t have known if the mixed sex toilets. That’s my idea of hell - moreso as a teenager.

So on vetting having any relevance…..

EJ MS said in short - women had nothing to worry about as Leonardo staff were security-vetted.

• Are trans identified individuals vetted in their dead name?
• What level of vetting takes place?
• Surely they would have to have a criminal conviction for it to show up on vetting?
• But what if they are perverts that haven’t been caught?
• I haven’t looked yet but I’m assuming that there are lots of vetted people who impact the rights of others?
• How does vetting impact their maleness?

It doesn’t remove one’s right to privacy or the legal protection of health and safety.

In fact why mention it at all? If it was an unvetted work space would the judgement be different? It allows people to distinguish this case - as majority of workplaces are unvetted so Leonardo won’t apply?

Are religion and belief discrimination not engaged if the washbasins are mixed sex? I worked in an organisation with a large enough contingent of Muslim employees and service users that single sex washbasins were required for the women (and men) to do their ablutions before prayer during Ramadan. The women removed their veils in the ladies. They couldn’t do that in a mixed sex washbasin area.

I too was puzzled by EJ MS's reliance on Leonardo staff being security vetted.

With something like a DBS, they can only discover something that's already recorded, so I could be a wrong 'un but just one that hasn't been caught out yet. It may be as good as they have in the circumstances but it's hardly perfect.

Also, what would Leonardo vet people for - any crime or misdemenor at all or just ones that might negatively impact them, like selling secrets to the enemy? Would they be very bothered if someone had, for instance, a criminal record for indecent exposure? Genuine questions, as I have no idea.

Yes that’s relevant. And depending on ratios - a single user toilet likely won’t cut it.

If there were a larger number having to access loos at same time to wash in preparation for prayer.

But Sutherland would say no one can tell the man is a man so nothing to see here 🤨

@Rightsraptor I don’t know but I suspect that EJ MS doesn’t either as I assume that wasn’t given in evidence.

https://careers.uk.leonardo.com/gb/en/security-and-vetting

These types of Security Vetting are common in IT roles on some sites in my experience.

I would guess that Leonardo also has a number of ex-forces staff as well.

Teenagers famously would never think to engage in antisocial behaviour in the dark!

AI tells me it’s United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV),

• *Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS)*: Basic check for all roles—verifies identity, employment history (last 3 years), and unspent criminal convictions. Completed quickly during recruitment.

• *Security Check (SC)*: Standard for most Leonardo positions involving "official-sensitive" information. Includes BPSS plus checks on the last 10 years of residency, criminal records, financial history, and a departmental interview.

Mmmm so it checks you’re not a convicted criminal - but say3% of rapes end in a conviction - 97% of rapists are male and freely roaming in society.

1. *Decision and Notification*:

- UKSV assesses risk on a "need-to-know" basis—no moral judgments, just security implications.

So if something dodgy turns up maybe Leonardo doesn’t actually know - they just get told a yay or nay from a third party?

Our teams expect to see people who have varied life experiences and will take a realistic view of modern life.

Acting with the highest standards of confidentiality and discretion, they make no moral judgements, handling personal information with respect and impartiality.

Their role is to support the security requirements, guaranteeing dignity and professionalism at all times.

Good to know you can get dignity in vetting - just not in the toilets!

It was an incredibly stupid or maybe just naive comment from the judge. People who have been vetted can still cause harm , a vetted male in a female single space can still be an affront the the privacy and dignity of a woman. Plenty of men in the military are vetted and still sexually abuse and harass their female colleagues or has she never heard of the scandals at various military basis with males using their rank as a power play in their sexual abuse and harassment of women.

I was just thinking about vetting - the type of man who put hidden cameras in loos tends to be ones that has been vetted. Maybe they are just the ones more likely to get caught and the story put in the papers. The politician in Edinburgh got his cameras right into the heart of parliament.

Voyeurism doesn’t seem to matter to the judge.

I now have a song in my head:
We got doctors, Lawyers, politicians too

Now there was a time, when they used to say, that behinds of every grown man were allowed in loos for grown women. But in these times of change, you know that it's no longer true. So we're coming into the courtroom cause there's something we forgot to say to you.

Vetting in for defense companies mostly checks to see if you are of generally good character and if there is anything in your past the puts you at risk of being compromised by a foreign agent. It is not like a DBS check where you are specifically being checked for working with children
Having a criminal record is not necessarily a reason why you would fail the vetting process. The bar is not that high
I think that the judge is reading a bit too much into the term 'vetted'

I agree.

Also that last paragraph of mine perhaps should have been put into song lines to make clear it’s not my usual vernacular!

The sisters are doing it for themselves?

They are indeed.

Oh I got it straight away, and now have the delightful Annie and Aretha as today’s earworm!

@TwoLoonsAndASprout I was writing all the professions down with teachers instead of lawyers and got into my head! There’s some good lines in that song.

Edit: apologies for earworm. If it’s any consolation, it’s in mine too.

On the vetting subject...

The man who raped me had previous convictions. When he was sentenced it turned out he had two previous convictions for raping children. He also had been in prison for murdering a woman in her 80s.

When he was arrested he was working in a job that meant he would have had a dbs check at the least, as he was a security guard at the crown court.

Any woman or child in the crown court building would be perfectly safe if he had decided he was a woman and had chosen to use the women's toilets by EJ MS's thinking.

How horrendous @Boiledbeetle . For every woman campaigning, I don’t think the judge gets that we have years of experience for our reasonings.

Yes DBS system can only do so much too. In my last longer post, lighthearted songs aside, I didn’t say that there are so many teachers in my data.

The vetted comment was so stupid. It made it even more clear that the Judge was clutching for any (im)possible reason to dismiss all of Kelly's claims.

If these were all such trustworthy males, then surely they would dutifully obey a Leonardo's policy on toilets that protected single-sex spaces. So as trans-identifying men they would know to use either use the men's toilet or an individual single-room gender-neutral toilet. And they could be trusted to obediently keep out of the women's.

The decision for the appeal is whether go for maximum humiliation on the grounds of it being a perverse decision by the Judge. Or simply on the grounds of her misapplication of law, her failure to address key points, and/or her lack of evidence regarding 'facts' stated in the judgement.

This was the most illogical and biased judgement I have ever read. If I were part of the Morton Fraser MacRoberts law firm I would be furious at having our reputation damaged by association.

The DBS can only find out if you’ve already been caught. It can’t look in your head (or indeed your hard drive) to see if you should have been caught.

What you say about teachers makes me feel quite sick.

I got the last laugh, he died in prison!

The teacher thing doesn't surprise me, it's probably near the top of the list of dream jobs for certain people with bad intentions.

I get that your average person might think dbs checks and extended vetting are more thorough than they actually are. I also get that your average person would assume those people that had issues flag up on their checks would not get employed.

But the judge should bloody know better.