Simon Cheetham KC, for the trust, said the nurses’ “central issue” was Rose using the changing room which meant they had “chosen to interpret” anything Rose or the trust did “in a negative way” and through a “negative prism”.
“Their single-minded pursuit of this issue has clouded their judgement,” Mr Cheetham said, adding Rose’s “very presence was seen as provocative”.
He also said the nurses’ decision to speak to the media was “unattractive” and they had made repeated allegations without “cogent evidence” and disclosures about Rose’s private life, which had led to Rose being publicly cast as a “highly predatory character”.
Mr Cheetham said the nurses’ treatment of Rose had been “unkind and unjustified”, with their allegations about conduct “exaggerated”.
The nurses had unnecessarily “demonised” Rose and were fighting a “public campaign” about policy and the “trust’s treatment of them as a group of women”, Mr Cheetham said.
He said staff were only given access to single-sex spaces if they had “declared they were living their life fully in that gender”, which was a “higher threshold” than the nurses claimed.
Mr Cheetham said the policy also “accorded with relevant legislation and guidance at the time”.
He said the trust had some 8,000 employees and had to balance the “competing” rights of those with the “protected characteristics” of biological sex and gender reassignment.
Mr Cheetham said the “reality” the trust faced at the time was that there were various sets of guidance that were “not consistent” with each other.
The tribunal judges will make their judgement on a future date but said it was unlikely to be reached before Christmas.
