Redvers v NHS Sussex Integrated Care Board & Mr Adam Doyle Thread 3

[fanOfBen]

TT summary:

Dr Redvers, a named GP safeguarding lead, has a constructive dismissal case. Clinical concerns were raised about a specific doctor at WellBN, a Brighton GP practice. She claims that as a result of escalating those claims from 2020 onwards, she was constructively dismissed.

Her legal claim is discrimination on the grounds of her employer’s perception she had gender critical beliefs and on the grounds of her protected belief in evidence-based medicine (EBM). The respondent defends the latter claim by pleading that EBM is just an opinion.

Earlier coverage of this hearing can be found on TT's Substack at:
t.co/TwXeLCDnpt

TT report what they hear in good faith but do not provide a verbatim transcript of the hearing.

TT's list of abbreviations:

J - Judge Katherine Andrews (sitting alone)
DR/C - Doctor Sarah Redvers, claimant
CM/RB - Chris Milsom, claimant barrister
CE/RB - Charlotte Elves, Claimant Barrister
PD - Peter Daly, solicitor for the C

NHSSICB/R1 - NHS Sussex Integrated Care Board, first respondent
AD/R2 - Adam Doyle, second respondent, CEO of R1 2019-2025
Rs - collectively the respondents
RB/BW - Ben Williams, Respondent's barrister
EBM - Evidence-based medicine
SG - Safeguarding

WB - WellBN, Brighton based GP practice
GC - Gender Critical or sex realist beliefs
GI - Gender Identity belief
WS - Witness Statement
Ix - investigation
Gx - grievance
Cx - complaint

SH/DSH - Dr Sam Hall, GP at WellBN, Trustee - the Clare Project (TCP), Clinical Lead - Trans Health Hub, GIC Partner - Trans Health Improvement Board at R1, trans-identified female
DA - Dusty Amroliwala, ext consultant, investigated complaint filed by DSH against C
LB - Lola Banjoko, Exec Managing Director, chair of Trans Health Improvement Board, advised R1 on trans matters
NC - Nikky Cambridge, former trustee of TCP

AC - Allison Cannon, Chief Nursing Officer, R1, tasked w implementing the recommendations of the 1st grievance outcome
CCD - Dr Claire Cochrane-Dyet, Dep Medical Director for System Improvement & Professional Standards, NHSE, commissioned Warshafsky Report
HD - Dr Hannah Davies, Deputy Chief Medical Office, R1

SD - Samantha Durrant, Lay vice chair until July 2022, 1st grievance manager
NE - Naomi Ellis, dep director of Safeguarding, R1
MF - Dr Mary Flynn, Named GP for Safeguarding, also filed g/x in relation to Amroliwala Report
PF - Pennie Ford, Executive Managing Director, R1, 2nd grievance manager

EG - Dr Elizabeth Gill, Chief Medical Officer, R1
HH - Hannah Hamilton, Chief financial officer, R1, 2nd grievance appeal manager
BJ - Dr Becky Jarvis, clinical lead for mental health, R1
TM - Tom Micklewright, managing partner of Lime Tree Surgery

IM - Ian Mundy, HR Consultant, Your Consultancy, 1st grievance investigator
MP - Mark Power, interim Chief People Officer (until April 2022), R1, managed Amroliwala investigation
RR - Dr Rebecca Richards, GP partner, Lime Tree Surgery, raised concerns to C about SH
AR - Anne Robson, Interim Chief People Officer (April -August 2022), R1

DS - Dr Dinesh Sinha, Chief Medical Officer (June 2022 - April 2024), Chair of Trans Health Improvement Board (THIB)
MS - Mark Smith, Chief People Officer, R1 (Aug 2022 - Jan 2025) Acting CEO (Jan 2025 - June 2025) Deputy CEO & Director of Transition (June 2025 - present)
RW - Dr Robin Warshafsky, GP NHSE, Author of Warshafsky Report (WR)

Thread 1:
www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5586672-wellbn-brighton-gp-practice-do-not-believe-in-evidence-based-medicine-tt-at-employment-tribunal-tomorrow

Thread 2:
www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5588924-redvers-v-nhs-sussex-integrated-care-board-mr-adam-doyle-thread-2

Yes, as with 'gender critical belief' the court use of the term applies to a subset of the whole concept. It picks out a key part that is the hardest to argue with.

Useful to legal cases, but less so for those who want to discuss the finer details of the original concept and contrast 'gender critical'with 'sex realist ' or 'evidence based.medicine' with other forms of 'medicine based on some sort of evidence or scientific principle'.

Here is a snipped video on twitter if anyone wants to see the report and interview

https://x.com/zeno001/status/2113703934762074571?s=46

It was nice to see no mention of people having ‘anti-trans’ views and for Sarah to have her position presented as the safeguarding failure it was. That she couldn’t do her job properly because safeguarding around this issue was failing but so too was the measures that were meant to strengthen the process.

They've clearly had a rethink on the style guide. 'Gender distressed' and 'gender questioning' children, not 'trans' ones; 'cross-sex hormones', not 'HRT'.

And it's very good that they highlighted the lack of face-to-face assessments and the prescribing to pre-teens.

The language choices were noticeable.

This absolutely bears repeating.

It’s nothing more than an account of what came to light during the tribunal. That we find honest reporting, or any reporting at all, remarkable speaks volumes about how partisan organisations have become.

I think I will commend the BBC for once. God knows I’ve made enough complaints.

The Telegraph has done a lot of good work here. Maybe the mainstream news will have to actually give facts.

From the horse's mouth:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwjdmy20yjmno

I am waiting for a full BBC documentary on the WellBN scandal.

I agree with @ThreeNewWords that in this case, EBM was significant because of its contrast to affirmative ‘care’ that excuses harming children, which was a sensible juxtaposition.

However, @HydrangeaFig is right in that there are reasonable criticisms about some of the limitations of EBM. For example, how it could disregard the social determinants of health approach vs a more biomedical model of EBM.

But in any case, and strictly speaking, I don’t see a direct comparison between it and GC/sex realist. There is always some scope for debates around contested evidence in the former, which calls subjective judgement into play. Whilst the latter is an objective fact.

A key issue is what constitutes a positive outcome.

Take someone who is living in squalor, rarely washing and dressing, rarely leaving the house, unemployed, isolated and lonely and distressed due to their sex and gender identity. They seek intervention to transition. They take cross sex hormones, delight in their softer skin and breast buds, leading to reduction in their ‘gender related distress’. This also results in increased washing and dressing, but nothing else changes.

1. According to Sam Hall’s model, treatment has been successful.
2. Some others might see this as a partially successful outcome, providing a better starting point from which to address other outcomes that must be sought for treatment to be deemed successful.
3. Others might say that until the dysfunctional lifestyle issues improve and we have the patient engaging constructively in the world, we need to put ‘gender affirming’ physical intervention with significant and irreversible side effects on hold. Mental health intervention could be administered to address this.

Medical treatment focussing on trans activists’ myopic focus on ‘being who I really am’ and physical appearance contrast significantly to all other areas of medicine where outcomes are centred around health and activities of daily living. 16 years on from discovering this disparity, I am still blown away by the blindness so many have with regard for this.

I am all for EBM. What we need is an evidence base related to gender related treatment that goes a lot wider than patient self report about distress and mental health symptoms. Many patients I meet, covering all kinds of conditions, report all sorts of improvements and declines in subjective aspects of wellbeing. We use this as one type of indicator but look to much wider factors before concluding treatment has been effective.

It makes me wonder whether we're missing a Grainger criterion that relates to a belief permitting challenges against it, and not responding with aggression and/or cancellation. Although it might be there and hidden in WORIADS.

The BBC is losing viewers by the thousands every year, losing money, and laying off staff and cancelling whole channels or moving them back online because of this.

Someone at the BBC is clearly looking into possible causes for this, and perhaps has started to realize how detrimental the activism within the corporation has been overall.

Perhaps.

There is something that has changed at the Beeb. They had this article about Russell T Davies

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6wyvjeke0g4o

Obviously, he shouldn't be receiving abuse (yadda, yadda, it really should go without saying but here we are) and I started reading with a bit of an eyeroll but the article goes on with a relevant interview with Tonia Antonazzi who's quite fulsome about RTD while also being a counterweight.

I like to think this is an example of a way forward. Even how it should have been conducted all along by the BBC. It is a definite improvement although the bar is so low perhaps it's my expectations that should be raised?

As Glinner said way back in 2020: "You don't tell children that they were born in the wrong body, because they are children and they will believe you."

I’m not sure the decline in viewers is just because of their position on all things trans, but it fits into an overarching theme.

I think the majority of people want and expect neutrality within the BBC. Most will tolerate a standalone programme with an agenda when it’s presented as such and is not part of many programmes with the same agenda, even when they disagree with them. Agreeing with some programmes and not others points to neutrality.

In general programming, pitched as neutral, people object to ideological positions presented as universal truths or contested positions.

The challenge is, those who agree with the ideological position of a biased programme pitched as a neutral programme, tend to think that it is objective, because they are blind to their own biases.

With the BBC, I think there are some people who are consciously manipulative and pushing and agenda. Then there are people who agree with the agenda and are oblivious to the bias as a result.

Bias or not I found myself questioning BBC news coverage and interest programs being broadcast on contentious issues. I unconsciously switched to other news outlets for coverage. It was coverage and selection of interviewees on womens’/trans rights etc that highlighted to me the obvious bias and hidden agendas. Why did they have a ‘ GI rights desk’ that monitored/selected/influenced content.
We need to be able to trust our state broadcaster for factual unbiased reporting and biological sex reported as well as trans identities when reporting crime and public interest information. Clear plain BBC English used to be the norm and the viewing public are more than capable of making their own minds up.

Just realized that by "because of this" I was implying that gender activism was causing all this in the BBC! I didn't mean that at all, just that the loss of viewership is causing loss of money which leads to loss of jobs and programming.

I don't think the activism has helped the BBC, however, and maybe someone at the top has noticed. Overt activism has no doubt contributed to loss of viewership, IMO.

I think that the challenge faced by the BBC was that it was complacently occupying its exalted position in the world of news when the Internet and then social media arrived and this led to the availability of more alternative sources of news that you can count. The BBC's response was to compete with its own offering of a set of identity politics that was approved of by its staff. With them being a very narrow part of the overall demographic of the audience.

This was completely the wrong approach. The BBC should have elevated itself away from the mass of competing voices into impartiality and trustworthy authority.

Articles about Dr Redvers in the Daily Mail and the Telegraph now. I don't know if they add anything - haven't read them yet.

Not read the either however I am hopeful that the headlines grab the naysayers and virtue signaller - I have friends and family in this group - who repeatedly told me to be kind to trans people and that as it didn’t affect children why was I so bothered.

When I said children are being experimented on one friend told me I was mentally deranged. Wonder if I will hear from her soon? She lives and dies by the BBC and the DM. She is also a teacher.

I’ve had all that too, being told to “ get off Mumsnet” (I have to hide it). Being told that of course Women’s sport is not under threat, and of course children aren’t at risk, and of course no one has lost their job or found themselves in court over this. And now sanity is beginning to return , see, it was all in your mind. Grr.

Of course. Hitler knew this and so did Mao.

Actually, so did Aristotle!

Here’s the Telegraph article
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/ccc06ecaece20cb3

Apologies oldtiredcyclist. I assumed you are a woman but have just seen on another thread that you are a man. So the link I posted isn't helpful.