"Darlington Nurses" vs County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust Tribunal Thread 3

[AuthorisedCat]

Link to Thread 1, 7-Oct to 23-Oct; pre-hearing discussion, evidence from KD (Day 1) and BH (Day 2).

Link to Thread 2
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5432103-darlington-nurses-vs-county-durham-and-darlington-nhs-trust-tribunal-thread-2

Five nurses working at Darlington Memorial Hospital have filed a legal case suing their employer, an NHS trust, for sexual harassment and sex discrimination. The nurses object to sharing the women’s changing facilities with a male colleague, Rose, who identifies as female. The NHS trust’s HR department dismissed the nurses’ concerns, stating they should “broaden their mindset” and “be educated”. More details can be found at Sex Matters and at Christian Concern who are supporting the nurses via the CLC.
The hearing started on October 20th, with evidence starting on October 22nd and is scheduled to last 3 weeks. To view the hearing online, requests for access had to be made by October 17th. The hearing is being live tweeted by Tribunal Tweets who have background to this case on their substack. An alternative to X is to use Nitter: nitter.net/tribunaltweets or nitter.poast.org/tribunaltweets
The Judge made clear at the start of the public hearing on Day 1 that only TT or press have permission to tweet. If online observers see/hear something in the court that isn’t reported by TT, we don’t mention it until the next time there’s a break. This is a very cautious approach to avoid any accusations of “live reporting” on MN. Commentary on the content of TT tweets is fine as soon as they’re posted on X.
Key people:
C/Ns - Claimants, the Darlington nurses
R/T/Trust - Respondent, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust
J/EJ – Judge/Employment Judge
NF - Niazi Fetto KC, barrister for claimants
SC - Simon Cheetham, KC, barrister for respondents
RH - Rose Henderson, trans identifying nurse
CG – Clare Gregory, ward manager
KD – Karen Danson, first claimant to give evidence.
BH – Bethany Hutchison, second claimant to give evidence
AH – Alistair Hutchison, husband of Bethany
Other abbreviations:
WFTCHTJ – Waiting For The Conference Host To Join
ET - Employment Tribunal
DMH/H – Hospital, Darlington Memorial Hospital
CR/CF - changing room or facilities
IX - internal investigation
XX – cross examination

Some background on the judge from a few years ago when he was at the bar.

Source: Mediatelegal https://share.google/FyWItk8M6rRGZvoc5

'Behind the friendly behaviour he's a killer cross-examiner'. I think we saw a glimpse of that today.

Have I read that right - they talk of complying with the Sex Discrimination Act 1975? I know it's stupid o'clock and I'm awake for some annoying reason, but I'm surely not hallucinating? INAL but I believe the SDA was rolled up with lots of other pieces of legislation into the EQA 2010, which is engaged here (I've been reading Michael Foran).

Nor do I understand their bit about the trust not discriminating between 'genders' in offering care to patients. Maybe it'll be clear in the cold light of day.

This Act is now repealed and its provisions are consolidated into the Equality Act 2010.

So you are right about the SDA being irrelevant for the past 10 years.

And as for the rest - we don’t discriminate based on gender. That means they are in breach of the EQA which gives people of one biological right the ability to exclude or have services from someone of a biological sex of their choosing.

You do have to ‘discriminate’ based on sex. And to do so needs to be protected under the law.

If someone can link me to the actual FOI outcome Id happily challenge it in my own right. However given they canned their trans policy / self ID yourself to get access to abuse women policy coincidently the same month as the Supreme Court ruling I suspect they’ve wised up a bit.

Hard agree (IANAL). I can't watch at all, but from TT (or the excellent @AuthorisedCat and thanks by the way) NF seems to be shredding them to pieces more thoroughly than the otherwise amazing NC precisely because he doesn't make it a war of beliefs. I'm still afraid that Judge Kemp could be a True Believer and find against Sandie (it would be hard given the witch hunt, but possible) because the Searles and Bumbas have not accepted they did anything wrong based on their twisted value system. Whereas after today I don't see how the Darlington case could go wrong, the Head of HR has basically admitted to actual factual wrongdoings...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0mxl1ymrvjo Good grief! They're not taking the line I was expecting at all. It's almost as if they've realised that what's happening might be, you know, wrong and illegal.

Yes I tried to articulate my thoughts on that up thread.

Fetto doesn’t need to be gender critical or have every fact coming out his ears or be the worlds best TERF.

He just says, group A were discriminated against for one person from group B. Was that legal, was that balanced, was that safe, were you open to other options?

When you take the gender critical nature out of it - single sexed spaces can’t allow for some special group from the other biological group. But even if we allow special group their own gender neutral space - why do they get the big room with all the facilities? Why discriminate for the exception? No balancing of rights was done.

Shame they couldn't get AT's name right - tut, tut BBC!

I read that BBC article last night, it's not changed overnight.
I did notice that there are no writer names attached to the article, and wondered if that was typical? No-one wants to put a name to it/take the flack?

Here you go, link to the whole FOI thread on this topic (which has no bearing on the ET but does illustrate the institutional capture via conflation of sex and gender). Again we see no straight answers given.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/single_sex_chaperone_and_intimat_3#incoming-2710523

That was a nice nod to Prunella Scales.

The difference is that following the Supreme Court judgement, the meaning of single-sex spaces is clear and not up for discussion.

An interesting point from the BBC article taken from a witness statement: for patients they put TIMs in a side room, not on the women’s ward. Bizarre that they didn’t adopt the same policy for the female CR.

I too think the nurses’ lawyer is doing a good job.

At first I thought regional reporter. Then I looked at a report from my home town that's made the BBC local news and saw it's got a by-line along with some spectacular errors so I'm not so sure.

I wonder if it ties in with the BBC reporter asking for a transcript yesterday? If so, then fingers crossed that they'll have plenty of fun today too because this is the way to get the whole TWAW bubble burst, especially now the fair Rose's pictures are all over the media.

When you take the gender critical nature out of it - single sexed spaces can’t allow for some special group from the other biological group. But even if we allow special group their own gender neutral space - why do they get the big room with all the facilities? Why discriminate for the exception? No balancing of rights was done.

I think that's what is grinding my teeth most in the BBC article - which is pretty good. 'If staff did not want to share a changing room with a transgender employee' is a very carefully spun piece of manipulation that hides all the reality.

The reality is that women who would not take their clothes off with a man who wanted to be present with them, they would be excluded. The price of using the women's facilities was to expose and provide their body to a man.

The 'balancing of rights' is another phrase that is currently getting away with murder. The nice enablement of a man who wishes everyone to support his personal fiction that he's something other than a man is to provide him with an alternative facility to the men's one. This can, if desired, be used by women who consent to play along and provide a man with their undressed body in service of the man. Their body, their almighty boundary issues. That's more than generous.

I'm really annoyed that the BBC article doesn't make it clear that 'transgenders' in this context refers solely to males identifying a females not being placed on female wards, and thus 'transgenders' in the female changing rooms are males identifying as females, not females identifying as males. It is so dishonest as the general readership may not be aware of this very pertinent fact. It is 100% intentional.

They shouldn’t have reworded the quote in the headline I agree, that wasn’t what was said. They do give it in full in the article.

Absolutely intentional. Yes Minister was demonstrating this manipulative language decades ago.

"Should those who will not share a changing room with a transgender person have to go elsewhere?" is going to raise one answer.

"Should women be forced to take their clothes off for a man or be excluded from services and resources for women?" is going to raise another.

One of these is factually honest.

The whole thing increasingly reminds me of the Grimms Fairytale about the Fisherman and his Wife where every wish that is met raises a greater and more unreasonable, greedy and entitled demand, until finally the granter of wishes removes everything given and walks away. People's tolerance for illusion, deception and for third spaces will wear out and the demanders are going to be left with 'get back to the mens'.

I am very glad the Darlington nurses have such excellent legal representation. On the one hand their case is so open-and-shut surely it could be won by anyone including a meerkat in a suit; but on the other hand the law is more complicated than I expect. One kick to the back of the net for our GC legal eagles but who knows who Christan Concern would get and it could go wrong with an inexperienced team. Seems I needn't have worried!

They don't need Naomi Cunningham to argue a hypothetical Pete the Plumber (Manly Man) if RH is a real life Pete.

The whole thing increasingly reminds me of the Grimms Fairytale about the Fisherman and his Wife where every wish that is met raises a greater and more unreasonable, greedy and entitled demand, until finally the granter of wishes removes everything given and walks away. People's tolerance for third spaces will wear out and the demanders are going to be left with 'get back to the mens'.

To me this is at the core of what will discredit gender ideology. It's unstable in the sense that because there's no end-point it's either on the advance or retreating. It's too unstable to occupy a stalemate position. This means that if it's allowed to advance then there will be no end to the demands and eventually women will end up in the position of those in the dystopian novel Swastika Night.

Thank you! Flagging to look at in next week.

That’s an excellent point, @nauticant and also that it is driven by the solipsistic demands of highly unstable or antisocial people.

It is but for the BBC transgender person is light years from using woman. You may recall the Woman rapes, Woman kills headlines which actually mean man kills etc.

Yes I know - that’s clear. But for all the Jane Russell fudgers - if they think it only applies to boards - or oh that ruling didn’t apply before this year - this approach sets out the position— even if you want to allow trans identifying men into a space - you cannot discriminate against those who need other spaces.

If these captured institutions start applying inclusive spaces signs on all existing women’s facilities to make them gender neutral - and make sub-par provision for single sex - this approach says - you always have to balance rights - and putting out a larger cohort for a smaller cohort isn’t objectively fair or in line with EqA.

So even the gender ideologues - when they start providing third spaces they can’t take those from women.

I'm still confused about why the claimants' case seemingly cannot be argued on the basis of the Supreme Court judgment. So instead we have this creative "don't mention the war!" approach in which the arguments seem to acknowledge that the effect of the judgment is there, but it mustn't be referred to.

Thanks for reposting that section and adding juice. It is something to savour.

Unlike some I don’t read the judge has having a go at AT when he said ‘I’ll be impressed if you do’. I think he was offering kindness to a witness so out of his depth and who has so screwed his own pooch that he doesn’t need further ignomy. I also read it as a kindly and careful warning to NT that the point has been made and it doesn’t need further interrogative attack.

I really respect the capacity for some judges to do this ie remember that even when someone is demonstrating clearly to all and sundry the full idiocy and failings of their actions/ lack of actions…they are still human and don’t need ducking in the fetid village pond in public ie the case doesn’t need that. I think he was genuine when he said he be impressed if AT knew the H&S rules by memory because no one would. It doesn’t mean, of course, that AT shouldn’t have reviewed them and understood them in relation to decisions he made but that point had already been fully made.

It’s a shame he didn’t do similar when nurses were being questioned but tbf they hadn’t made tits of themselves.

In some ways I wish Judge Kemp had done more of that. Reflecting on the difference, he allowed JR too much scope to be unnecessarily nasty and I think that was because he was very caught up in self ie aware that every action he took would be brought under the lens of an appeal and he was so exercised by the need to be seen to be scrupulously fair that he he went too far the other way.