Tempest v Rural Payments Agency Tribunal Thread 6

[myladydisdainisyetliving]

Previous thread: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5549959-tempest-v-rural-payments-agency-tribunal-thread-5

TT substack: tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/tempest-vs-defra-and-rural-payments

Tempest (a TW) is claiming discrimination, harassment and/or victimisation on grounds of gender reassignment. Central to the claim is the existence of the Sex Equality and Equity Network in the Civil Service (SEEN). SEEN has been granted right to intervene. Parts of the original claim against the co-chair of SEEN (Elspeth Duemmer-Wrigley) and another party (Andreas Mueller) were struck out or narrowed. Another claimant, PQ, is no longer part of the case.

Please note that Elspeth still has a garden in need of seeds and water to support the ability of SEEN to be an intervenor in this case. The claim originated because she said "only women menstruate" and a search with her name and those terms at the usual gardening website should point you to her plot.

HH so across that period you were receiving numerous grievances from trans

.

Well quite.

And what is being framed as 'lived experience ' here is actually just a person's belief about themself. I have absolutely no idea why this 'lived experience' has somehow become a thing that everyone has to bow down to.

Is denying someone's existence actually a crime, other than within the GI religion?

Seems to me that the sensible response to someone saying you don't exist is to say 'Clearly, I do' and then walk on.

But surely trans ppl also deny the existence of women?

Thanks v much, @WomanInnaWoods and @MarieDeGournay

HH my question was that you took no steps to evaluate that evidence
J you have referred repeatedly to PSED, we have no jurisdiction over that, why are you referring to it repeatedly?

I think the sounds we can all hear are HH desperately scraping the barrel for any credible line of questioning.

Protecting yourself from discrimination claims sounds familiar, from somewhere... oh, right, all the other ET's and EAT's where women were told to kick rocks.
That argument cuts both ways, let me fix it real quick.

"you were more concerned and exclusively that you would protect yourself against a claim of discrim on philosophical belief and did not concern yourself with the trans female people in the org"

There.

Hey 'to be fair..' is my line😁
I usually 100% agree that they have to put their client's case as well and as forcefully as they can, that's their job, and that's a crucial role in a tribunal/court case but HH has managed to alienated even me.
She keeps putting forward extreme TRA ideas as if they were undisputed fact, and keeps ignoring the very existence of women with rights in the same universe as ST.
She is giving no room whatsoever to other people's rights, the EA, women's distress at having men in their spaces, freedom of expression, the role of moderators, DEFRA's obligations under the law, DEFRA's moral responsibility to show balance, fairness, objectivity to ALL employees.

😡, just 😡!

From TT:

colleagues
NB I would not say numerous,
HH how many were you aware of
NB I would say I was aware of 2 more beyond STs, others may have been dealt with at dept level
HH you had JH letter in response to 1st g/x from ST, you accept completely that she was distressed and very upset

NB yes
HH you had all of that evidence but at no stage did you take conscious steps to consider that evidence against PSED
NB I was very alive to the discourse and exchanges happening across DEFRA, we will never know but the fact that DEFRA SEEN was rec'd was already a x dept

SEEN network, the EA allowed the expression of GC beliefs our employees in DEFRA already had the ability to express, engage and share their views at an individual level. Regardless if we had recognised SEEN at dept level, we continue to vigilant about the way that people

conducted themselves within the CoC.
HH my question was that you took no steps to evaluate that evidence
J you have referred repeatedly to PSED, we have no jurisdiction over that, why are you referring to it repeatedly
HH its for the indirect discrimination claim -

HH its for the indirect discrimination claim

This could be their best bet?

Perhaps '...lived experience...' could be replaced with '...opinion...'

J you have referred repeatedly to PSED, we have no jurisdiction over that, why are you referring to it repeatedly

Thank you Judge!

Is this correct, & if so why?

He can find against DEFRA on the grievance process, and he can find that some of the comments constituted harassment. Alternatively he can find that they did not and it was a matter of balance.

Because she’s the barrister 😂

My lived experience is being able to shout fuck off at anything that annoys me, pick my nose, scratch my arse, fart and belch loudly whenever I want (not saying I do of course 😶). However, I doubt an employer would allow my lived experience of those things to take precedence over the rest of the workforce who would rightly thinking I'm a gobby, minging cow who should be told by management to grow the fuck up and act like a professional.

NB:We had a request for recognition, against the backdrop of the EA and the culture of DEFRA, we had already recognised subgroups of faith and belief networks; Christian, Jewish, Muslim. We were seeking to ensure that we were acting to comply with A and then attempting to risk manage the issues that it might present. We were trying to do that in a careful way, I genuinely believe we were not an employer that was observing a problem we were trying to manage a difficult set of issues in a careful considered way

Would like to see NC cross-examine the panel, also.

From TT:

proportionate means to a legitimate end. Repeats qs. NB I disagree, we kept it under constant review, we monitored to try and create the right environment for our employees
HH you mentioned that employees already had opportunity to express GC beliefs individually or through xdept

SEEN, was that not sufficient
NB we had a request for recognition, against the backdrop of the EA and the culture of DEFRA, we had already recognised subgroups of faith and belief networks; Christian, Jewish, Muslim. We were seeking to ensure that we were acting to comply with

EA and then attempting to risk manage the issues that it might present. We were trying to do that in a careful way, I genuinely believe we were not an employer that was observing a problem we were trying to manage a difficult set of issues in a careful considered way.

HH given the evidence that you had of impact and distress the fact that SEEN member already had ability to express was an important in the balancing act J you're being asked if you needed another one
NB I don't know that need came into it, we had a number of networks at dept

HH 2 final qs on this point, even w/o a formal assessment we don't seen any alternative consideration of evidence based assessment

Oh, the irony!

Doh! Sorry, got confused between HH & NB. Naomi will cross examine NB, won't she?

Oh yeah that's right - I fell for that one too 🙃
It suggests that HH has spoken more like a TRA ally than a barrister - we're mixing the messenger up with the message because of how she is presenting it.

NB: The question for me and my team was did we want to treat SEEN differently.

That would have been discrimatory, wouldn't it?