NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #24

[nauticant]

Sandie Peggie, a nurse at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy (VH), has brought claims in the employment tribunal against her employer; Fife Health Board (the Board) and another employee, Dr B Upton. Ms Peggie’s claims are of sexual harassment, harassment related to a protected belief, indirect discrimination and victimisation. Dr Upton claims to be a transwoman, that is observed as male at birth but asserting a female gender identity.

The Employment Tribunal hearing started on Monday 3 February 2025 and was expected to last 2 weeks. However, after 2 weeks it was not complete and it adjourned part-heard. It is planned that it will resume on 16 July and the last day of evidence will be 28 July and then there will be 2 days of submissions from counsel meaning that the hearing will end on 30 July.

The hearing commenced with Sandie Peggie giving evidence. Dr Beth Upton gave evidence from Thursday 6 February to Wednesday 12 February.
Access to view the hearing remotely was obtainable by sending an email request to [email protected] headed Public Access Request (Peggie v Fife Health Board) 4104864/2024 and requesting access.

However, as a result of problems with the livestreaming, apparently caused by a very large number of observers, remote public access to the hearing was suspended on Tuesday 11 February. It was suggested that it might be reinstated at some point but don't count on it.

The hearing is being live tweeted by https://x.com/tribunaltweets and there's additional information here: https://tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr. This also has threadreaderapp archives of live-tweeting of the sessions of the hearing for those who can't follow on Twitter, for example: archive.is/xkSxy.

An alternative to Twitter is to use Nitter: https://nitter.poast.org/tribunaltweets

Thread 1: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5186317-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse
Thread 2: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5267591-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-thread-2
Thread 3: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5268347-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-3
Thread 4: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5268942-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-4
Thread 5: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5269149-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-5
Thread 6: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5269635-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-6
Thread 7: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5270365-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-7
Thread 8: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5271511-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-8
Thread 9: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5271596-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-9
Thread 10: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5271723-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-10
Thread 11: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5272046-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-11
Thread 12: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5272276-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-12
Thread 13: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5272398-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-13
Thread 14: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5272939-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-14
Thread 15: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5273119-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-15
Thread 16: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5273636-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-16
Thread 17: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5273827-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-17
Thread 18: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5274332-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-18
Thread 19: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5274571-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-19
Thread 20: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5275782-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-20
Thread 21: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5276925-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-21
Thread 22: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5280174-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-22
Thread 23: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5285690-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-23

Absolutely agree with this.

@Bannedontherun sounds like the sort of thing I was wondering about. I’ll check the website.

I agree that there may be an arguable case, but I think it is very dependent on the specific circumstances. I would be surprised if the courts wanted to make a blanket decision that all venues must provide single sex toilets.

@prh47bridge I am a member of the national trust and am going to start with them as some venues have gender neutral facilities which i personally find unacceptable sue to my own experiences and age.

That's my reading of it, spannasaurus. It's about discrimination based on the 2 protected characteristics intersecting.

You could have a group for men with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

You could have a group for women.

But if you have a group for women and men with PCoGR, what is your legal basis for excluding men without PCoGR? You can't say 'because they're men', because you let some men in. And you can't say 'because they don't have the characteristic of gender reassignment' because you let in women who don't have that. And what is your legitimate aim?

It's like the current Girl Guides rules. All girls allowed, some boys allowed, other boys excluded. It's not been legally tested, but I think even before this ruling it wasn't actually within the law because it's an incoherent grouping with no legitimate aim.

Redheadedness isn't a protected characteristic, so there no prohibition on discriminating against someone on that basis. Although one could argue indirect discrimination on race.

But the women aren't transitioning.

This one ne always makes my head hurt, though. Legislating for nonsense will do that.

Increasingly we are seeing venues with toilet facilities for men and then where there would once have been a ladies loo it has been changed into an “all gender” toilet. I imagine this would almost certainly be sex discrimination because women are being given less provision when arguably they require more.

Gender is redundant now. Sex matters.

If you have single gender facilities you could be discriminating against certain groups.

A trans man who wants to use female facilities is actively discriminated against in this scenario unless there are other facilities available because they have a right to services appropriate to their sex. Therefore this would be illegal.

Also single gender raises issues of discrimination for certain religious minority groups too.

If you have a group for people who identify as women, that will include men who don't have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. That only comes into play if you exclude men who identify as women unless they have a GRC. So if, as @spannasaurus suggests, you have a group for people who identify as women, you don't have a problem.

If you want to allow women and men with a GRC, you are in a different situation. The law allows you to limit membership of an association to people who share a protected characteristic. Whether you could limit membership to people who share one of two protected characteristics not specifically set out in the legislation. That would be for the courts to determine.

I believe they can do that as it is merely a description of the facilities.

The benefit is, if it now says Women, Female etc. then only biological women can use it.

Businesses have the option of leaving toilets/changing rooms etc labelled men/women etc knowing they are truly single sex or renaming them unisex, gender neutral etc.

The point is going forward we should be confident if it says women there will be no men.

Possibly yes, but I think this is an area that will be very fact specific. I may be wrong, but I don't think the courts will go for a broad brush approach of saying that single gender facilities are always illegal or that venues must provide single sex facilities even when these are not specifically required by law.

Ah, interesting, I was assuming no women would be involved - I didn’t realise the poster meant natal females too. I thought she was meaning just men (because in my mind natal females can’t “identify as women”)

In my example what would be my legal basis for discriminating against men by not allowing them to join my group

@Bannedontherun I would be very interested.

To clarify women and men could join my group if they identify as women

All venues MUST be accessible to all groups.

Thus if you go single gender you make groups which should have equal access because treated less favourably. That's unlawful unless you are balancing needs based on legal protected characteristics using legitimate exceptions (sex being the key one).

Using gender instead of sex means that various females who also have other protected characteristics are treated less favourably.

We know that exceptions based on sex are allowed when it comes to gender reassignment.

So you legally can do one option but not the other.

Sorry I hadn’t realised you’d said essentially what I wanted to say @NoBinturongsHereMate

If you are running a group for women only, that is a group for people sharing a protected characteristic. That is specifically allowed by the Equality Act.

If you are running a group for people who identify as women regardless of sex, your legal basis for not allowing men who identify as men to join is that they don't identify as women. Gender identity is not a protected characteristic, so you are allowed to discriminate on that basis. You are not excluding these men because they are men. You are excluding them because they don't identify as women.

I think you are stating with absolute certainty something that we cannot know for sure. I am not convinced that the courts will agree with you.

If you have a group for people who identify as women, that will include men who don't have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. That only comes into play if you exclude men who identify as women unless they have a GRC.

The criteria are: 'proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex. [My emphasis]

I expect the majority of the legislators thought they were writing a category for people who fully intended to have hormone and surgical treatment and get a GRC as soon as possible. But what they actually wrote is so broad and wooly that 'thinking about maybe wearing a dress at some point in the future' would count. So it's hard to see how any man in the group wouldn't be covered. By joining (process) he's said that he's a woman (reassigned sex), and being a member of a womens group (and interested in 'womany' things) could be said to be an atrribute of sex.

Yes, I agree this should be challenged as sex discrimination.

But I'm not running a female only group so the group members don't share the PC of sex so there is no protected characteristic for EA purposes.

I really don't think this is one for the courts. Honestly. If you understand how the equality act works generally you should understand how this works.

There isn't a grey area here.

People will again try and make out there is, but it's simply not true.