"Darlington Nurses" vs County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust Tribunal Thread 5

[ThreeWordHarpy]

Thread 1, 7-Oct to 23-Oct; pre-hearing discussion, KD (day 1 of evidence) and BH (day 2).
Thread 2, 23-Oct to 28-Oct; BH (day 2), CH, JP, MG (day 3&4), TH, SS, ST, LL (day 4), JS, AT (day 5)
Thread 3, 28-Oct to 29-Oct, AT (day 5&6), TA (day 6&7)
Thread 4, 29-Oct to 31-Oct, TA, AM (day 7) JB (day 8)

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 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 Seamus Sweeney
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
SW - Sue Williams, NHS Trust HR
KD – Karen Danson, first claimant to give evidence.
BH – Bethany Hutchison, claimant
AH – Alistair Hutchison, husband of Bethany
CH – Carly Hoy, claimant
JP – Jane Peveller, claimant
MG – Mary Anne (aka Annice) Grundy, claimant
TH – Tracy Hooper, claimant
SS – Siobhan Sinclair, witness for the claimants, retired from Trust
ST – Sharron Trevarrow, witness for the claimants, retired from Trust, former housekeeper and wellbeing officer
LL – Lisa Lockey, claimant
JP – Professor Jo Phoenix, expert witness
JS – Jane Shields, witness for the claimants
AT - Andrew Thacker, NHS trust Head of HR
TA – Tracy Atkinson, NHS trust HR.
AM – Andrew Moore, NHS Head of Workforce Experience
JB – Jillian Bailey, NHS Workforce Experience Manager

I wouldn't automatically assume that admin and managerial staff add nothing of value. It's obvious from the Fife and Darlington tribunal that clinical staff need help and guidance on these issues.

However, the thing I don't understand is how can there can be so many well paid managers freely admitting that don't have any particular expertise and they delegate staff management to clinical staff.

I’ve been reading about sports in America and that lots of places allowed males into women’s sports because they thought the men would sue them. They just expected women to accept it.
I suspect some of that was going on, they were more fearful of the reprisals from ‘Rose’.

I am not a medic.

however, I have previously understood that antibiotics can make you fatigued in the same way that chemotherapy does - ie the body has to deal with all the deal cells that the treatment has killed and that’s what is so tiring as your body expends loads of energy doing this.

Were these 'lesbians' making a formal complaint using the correct forms and procedure? Otherwise it's just 'rumblings' and can be ignored

The infectious control doctor called me yesterday and said there was a 1-3% chance one of the drugs was making me tired and 0% of the other. They are going to see how I am next week because they really don't want to change the regime but will if this continuesto be so debilitating. This combination is the best way of getting rid of the miniscule traces of remaining MSSA.

All my infection markers are now normal apart from one which notoriously takes weeks to come down. I wonder if it's trauma from the whole experience in the last few months.

I’m a bit confused as to why it was agreed to leave out the issue of TW et al supporting RH being in theatre for KD operation? Is it because that was resolved by pressure being put on them and so RH didn’t end up being there? It still would seem relevant even if resolved?

But in someways it does clarify key differences with SP case.

On reflection, the key difference in my view, is that NC was treating SP ET has paradigmatic ie the finding in this case should prevent any other individual having to go through the same across the NHS as a whole and so it was crucial to tease out capture and how that capture limited the thinking when
it came to the idea of balancing rights ie that capture in itself is discriminatory and consequently creates a hostile working environment.

NC is not doing bigger picture framing and I think is wise in the decision because I think the judge is focussed on the case in hand and that would have been an error of judgment.

Which is why NF isn’t opening up testimony to ‘capture’ questions. I think he is right to allow the J to make his own inferences from certain utterances particularly given his main target was to undermine the credibility of TW which he did very smoothly, I thought. That allows the J to make the other necessary inferences ie that the witness was motivated by an emotional response which was in essence discriminatory and should not be the case for someone holding a managerial position responsible for staff. Another reasonable inference from t the reason no one had previously complained is because they were to
intimidated by TW to do so and, in fact, taking the petition down was because management were
fully aware than the hostility would prevent individuals raising the issue but that a ‘torte’ approach would scupper them.

I think NF and J fully aware of what has played out during SP case and NF knows it doesn’t need played out again here.

It is almost impossible to think that the J could come to the conclusion that whilst this area might have been fraught and tricky — if not potentially reputationally dangerous territory for individuals to try and tackle — that is not a get-out-of-jail free card. They had responsibilities as part of their remit which they all shirked. ALL of them. And you cannot hide behind process when that process is pre-loaded problematically. The idea that policy is framed in consultation with groups with clear agendas and without referring to regulations should, in a fair world, result in admonishment from the ET at the very least.

Wow, I didn't understand why people were writing it as 'lesbians'. That is a shocker. (One of many, of course). And what does it mean? Pretend lesbians? Male lesbians?

She really did. I saw-ded it.

It appeared as an instinctive movement of her arms and hands to go with the word.

J It's v sensitive. We'd like to understand why no-one shld speak to her. Why do u think it shldnt be right

Good question, judge!

Followed by

TW It's a very sensitive discussion. What the rumours are. I wldnt have felt comfy asking those Qs of anyone
J Cldnt it be done in a sensitive manner
TW probabaly it cld have been done in a sensitive manner
J So nobody had a discussion w Rose
TW We were ve busy.

She meant the old fashioned kind of lesbians but couldn't bear to utter the word without corralling it with a physical gesture. She did the same with 'transgenders' earlier. I agree with @Mmmnotsure , it seemed automatic.

She was referring to same sex attracted types of lesbians, who as we know are raving transphobes, for not liking a girls dick.

Her purity signalling to her own community (daughter/son/niece/father) who knows was IMHO very obvious.

I have long thought that management and administration has become the mmost important activity of the NHS. Layer upon layer of admin while people wait for hours trolleys in corridors. In what world is this improvement

Like this?

And there was I thinking that kind of mindset/reaction had died out decades ago.

It read like she was auditioning for a "Miranda" reunion show!

I don’t think she was. I think she was referring to supportive of Rose “lesbians” who were concerned that the awful transphobes would also object to them in the CR if they object to Rose.

Not fully caught up yet - but where have we seen this before, "ladies", "gentlemen" and "lesbians"? Any other tribunals come to mind?

It wasn't unlike this in the 1980s - my mother worked in one of the large hospitals in central Sheffield and "Admin" was about 4 or 5 people.

The real management explosion came in the late 80s and 90s and the Thatcher government that believed that the NHS could be run like M&S (Rayner scrutinies) and added multiple management layers

• the internal market meant that departments had to sit around working out how much to charge each other - so needed more admin and management staff
• contracting out - sack all the directly employed, but low paid cleaning and catering staff and hire expensive managers to conduct even more expensive contracting processes
• audit culture - need for all processes to be defined in such a way that a box can be ticked and hire more managers to check the boxes ticked by other managers
• belief in management culture - that just hiring more managers would make things run better
• Personnel became "human resources" - the effects of which we've seen in the past few days - the "Head of Personnel" was replaced with an HR Director, A Workforce Experience manager, A Talent Manager and an EDI Manager - none of whom have any responsibility or knowledge of SSS, H&S or keeping men out of the changing rooms - they are just there to filter out "noise in the system" (otherwise known as ignoring complaints - if they are not the right sort of complaint) 🙀

😁

@MyrtleLion If there are any hyperbaric oxygen centres near you the NHS does sometimes commission that treatment for wound healing. Or if you can afford to pay MS centres are generally cheaper than commercial outfits.

You are fighting off a nasty infection, not really surprising you need a lot of rest. I'd add prebiotics to you diet and a good amount of fruit for its vitamin C content.

Good luck with the job applications.

TW: Vair, vair busy. 🤣

I think the concept of convalescence needs to come back - when our bodies need to work hard getting rid of dead cells, building new ones and all the while keeping the other functions going, you are bound to feel tired.
Thanks for all the TT pasting, have a good rest and hope you start to come round.

It had the same effect but instead of air quotes, she did a sort of whole body tic while low-voice mouthing the words "transgenders" and then later "lesbians".

Finally caught up. Thanks for all the pasting and comments.

Yes, this.

I wondered if she was trying to signal how very progressive she is, while letting us know that she has to work hard at helping others to reach her advanced level of understanding.