"Darlington Nurses" vs County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust Tribunal Thread 8

[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)
Thread 5, 31-Oct to 04-Nov; JB (day 8), SW, CG, JR (day 9)
Thread 6, 04-Nov to 05-Nov; RH (day 10), SW (day 11)
Thread 7, 05-Nov to 11-Nov; SW (day 11), closing submissions

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 now complete. Submissions are being made on November 11th. 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, NHS 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
AT – Anna Telfer, NHS Deputy Director of Nursing
SW – Sandra Watson, Matron for General and Elective Surgery
JR – Jodie Robinson, manager of Rose

The reference to ‘men’ and ‘women’ in the 1992 Regulations must, in our judgement, be interpreted harmoniously and consistent with ‘sex’ and ‘men’ and ‘women’ under the Equality Act. This was not seriously contested by Mr Cheetham, who conceded that this ‘may’ be the case. Parliament cannot, in 1992, prior to legislating for transgender recognition, have intended those words to bear any meaning other than biological sex. Nothing in the Equality Act or in other legislation since 1992 changes that.

Such clarity

Compare with Kemp tying himself in knots attempting to support Upton and Fife, to the extent that he had to make up judicial quotes to justify his decisions.

This judgement is a breath of fresh air

I have also sent a complaint to the BBC.

So am I right in thinking that this talk of a 'partial' victory is because Rose himself has not been found to have misbehaved, but the NHS and hospital authorities were wrong in law, and did not treat the nurses fairly. But the big story is that males in women's spaces is a no-no.

From my occasional reading of transgender Reddit, a lot of them come across as very young, confused and ill-informed. No wonder they can't cope with reality intruding into their fantasy.

I should probably have added para 132 for completeness. Emphasis is mine.

There is nothing in the Equality Act that stands to override the 1992 Regulations and affords Rose or any other trans woman a ‘right’ to access the female changing room. The prohibition against gender reassignment discrimination under the Equality Act does not equate to a ‘right’ to access that space, such that it gives rise to competing rights with women who have rights under the 1992 regulations to be provided with suitable single-sex facilities in the relevant circumstances.

Brilliant - just been for swim and sauna and come back to this party going on.

Sense at last, thank you to those brave women for standing up to this shite 👏

It is terrifying - there are already references to suicidality under the post about the case. There is an awful lot of legal illiteracy there, which of course is understandable if you are not a lawyer, but they seem to genuinely believe it is about Rose's "trans" status rather than that he is a male.

BBC just sent me acknowledgment of my complaint

yay

This is interesting. Re consultation on the Transitioning in the Workplace (TIW) policy. Very clear who wasn't consulted...:

52.The Trust does not consult with individual members of staff on the creation or
development or review of workplace policies (including the TIW policy). That is not
unusual and in an organisation of 8,500 staff, it would be wholly unrealistic to
expect it to do so. Consultation is – and insofar as concerns the TIW policy was - undertaken with the Respondent’s recognised trade unions on the JCNC. In developing the TIW policy, Mr Moore’s team also consulted with ‘staff network
groups.’ These groups were created some years ago by the Workforce Experience team. The groups are: LGBTQ+ Staff Network Group; Disability and Long-Term Conditions Staff Network Group; Unity and Ethnic Diversity Staff Network Group
and Faith Staff Network Group. The network groups receive drafts of the policies and are asked to provide feedback as part of the equality impact assessment of the policy.

Sorry for the repeat posting, there are so many gems. This one deals with the suggestion the nurses needed to "broaden their mindsets" at para 147:

One can have a broad mindset on the rights of transgender people whilst at the same time raise legitimate concerns about the effect of having to share a space whilst being exposed in one’s underwear in the presence of someone of the opposite biological sex. Given the circumstances in which it was suggested, the intention to ‘educate’ with a view to broadening mindsets served to highlight to the DSU nurses in particular that they were not being taken seriously, reinforcing the feeling that they were seen as transphobic or bigoted. If nothing else, it demonstrated a prioritisation of one group over another.

Me too. It says they aim to respond within 10 working days

This judgement is so good - thought of everything, spells it out. Yay!

Omg that's great!

Judge Kemp really needs to read this judgement 😂

I have only been skim reading the judgement but so far I’ve been impressed with a lot of the observations made.

There’s another good reason too.

The head legislation for the 1992 regulations is the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, another set of whose regulations is/are the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. These provide protections at work for pregnant women.

On the basis that all regulations of the same Act should use the same definition of women, the same argument that the SC applied to determine that women means biological women (that to do otherwise would remove pregnancy protections from trans-identifying women) must mean that women in all health and safety regulations means biological women too.

Thank you to everyone adding snippets. All very reassuring

Report on Radio 4 now.

Edit: That was brief and didn't really add anything. But there's a lot to go through to be in a position to provide full and reliable analysis.

So no women's network then. Quelle surprise.

And I wonder what the faith network said.

Judge Sweeney is my new hero! 😍

I assume he is the Judge Seamus Sweeney of Parklane Plowden Chambers in Newcastle, who is described as an excellent advocate and expert in Employment Law?

Some heroes do wear wigs.

I'm glad this judgment wrestled with H&SAWA but confused because SKemp's AI verbose judgment said he couldn't. Was this another AI hallucination, different legal jurisdictions or something else?

🤣🤣

Kemp is an ideologue. He went to extreme lengths to ignore anything that would have lead to the correct and lawful outcome.

The difference between this judgement and the Kemp one seems massive. This has clearly been thought through, and I love the concept of the 1992 regs being set alongside the Equality Act, they both apply, and are not contradictory, far from it.