NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #54

[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 resumed on 16 July and the last day of evidence was 29 July 2025. It resumed again over 1 to 2 September for closing submissions.

The hearing commenced with Sandie Peggie giving evidence. Dr Beth Upton gave evidence from Thursday 6 February to Wednesday 12 February 2025. Sandie Peggie returned to give more evidence on 29 July 2025.

Access to view the second part of the hearing remotely was obtainable by sending an email request to: [email protected].

The hearing was live tweeted by x.com/tribunaltweets and there's additional information here: tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr-005 and tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr-bd6. 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.ph/WSSjg.

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

Links to previous threads #1 to #50 can be found in this thread: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379717-sandie-peggie-list-of-threads-covering-employment-tribunal-and-afterwards

Thread 51: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5402652-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-51 1 September 2025 to 2 September 2025
Thread 52: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5403218-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-52 2 September 2025 to 4 September 2025
Thread 53: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5404208-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-53 from 3 September

Oh no Myrtle that sounds awful. I hope you are on the mend soon and it's not long until you are in the comfort and quiet of you own home. 💐

Yep until the Supreme Court ruling , Upton had NHS Fife over a barrel.

I'm sure the Supreme Court will be cowering as soon as they find out. Either that, or shaking with laughter. Seriously, if that's the best they've got....

Well, they could have listened to and acted on Sandie's concerns, conducted a proper investigation when Dr Upton made her complaints and treated both parties equally, complied with the Information Commissioner and acted as soon as the Supreme Court clarified matters. But other than that, yeah, nothing they could do. Nothing at all. Poor little NHS Fife being treated so nastily. My heart bleeds for them. Well, actually, it doesn't.

@MyrtleLion Sending you infection-busting get-well-soon wishes!

@MyrtleLion hope you get the surgery soon and get home to recover x

Do you need a care package, @MyrtleLion?

Hospitals can be rubbish places to be, I hope things improve quickly and you're well enough to get home soon.

I'm planning to listen to Michael Foran's latest analysis today, and hoping he has a look at the respondent's submissions and has something to say about those soon as well!

So they knowingly backed themselves into a corner that had a high chance of ending up in court. Because Sandie also had the protected characteristic of sex which they knew about and that’s the reason they should have done equality impact assessments!

I don't really see how. NHS Fife were quite unequivocally in breach of the 1992 Workplace Regulations, which mandate single-sex changing rooms, as well as being in breach of the Equality Act.

Let's remind ourselves that even if the Scottish government had won in the Supreme Court, NHS Fife would still have been in breach of both the 1992 Workplace Regulations and the Equality Act. A victory for the Scottish government would simply have meant that men with a GRC could use female changing rooms, not that men who identified as female, but with no GRC, could use female changing rooms.

It all seems massively clear-cut to me. I don't know why NHS Fife are apparently so stupid.

Hope you're feeling much better, and back at home, soon @MyrtleLion!

It's not just NHS Fife, it's the whole NHS that hates women.

My Trust is still conspicuously ignoring the Supreme Court verdict, despite jumping to it about urgently curtailing the role of physician's assistants after the Leng review. But who's heard of the Supreme Court eh? I'm sure the entire universe is familiar with the Leng review, the SC is small fry in comparison, according to my Trust.

Spot on Corgi. To add Foran commented that the judge was having difficulty understanding that the 1992 regs has to be taken in to account in his judgement.

NC had to explain that if the 1992 regs, was to be ignored by the Tribunal they would be potentially endorsing a respondent committing a criminal act.

Sorry to hear your infection has landed you back in hospital @MyrtleLion , and I can sympathise on the need for noise cancelling earplugs. Hopefully the op will be sorted out soon and you'll be able to get back to the peace of your own bed.

I think NHS Fife is a very good example of functional stupidity (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012) – a real academic concept that’s sometimes expressed as “institutional stupidity.” It describes when organisations encourage narrow thinking, discourage questioning, and reward compliance, leading to smooth operations but poor learning or innovation.

In “The Stupidity Paradox” (Alvesson & Spicer, 2016), they argue that many organisations thrive on “functional stupidity” — people stop asking why they’re doing things, because it’s safer, faster, and more rewarded to just comply.
So while “institutional stupidity” isn’t a formal discipline, it’s a recognised phenomenon — one that captures the paradox of smart people producing foolish results within large, rule-bound systems. This probably applies to a great many institutions and explains why so many are poor at innovation.

@MyrtleLion best wishes ☕🍰💐

Sorry to hear of your troubles Myrtle and sending healing and soothing wishes your way along with some peace and quiet.

But Upton already wanted ‘othering’ by being treated differently to all other men. That’s the ‘othering’ surely. If he didn’t want othering, he should have accepted being treated like everyone else with a biological sex. He did the ‘othering’ all by himself asking for special one off treatment.

That’s the argument, isn’t it, Coats?

Wasn't he offered a separate single occupancy space to change in? If a woman hadn't wanted to use the female communal space for some legitimate reason and was instead offered a private, single occupancy alternative, that would have been deemed a very generous solution and she'd probably have been thrilled. Nobody would have thought it was "othering". It's literally because he's male and everyone knows it that it's seen as "othering".

These people complain about designated unisex spaces being "othering" too, even though the whole point is that literally anyone can use them.

Translucent's submission is interesting; courageous even.

It seems even more likely to me that the 11th hour Bananarama defence arose after Translucent took an interest in the case, but that is pure hunch on my part.

Anyway, I just want to wish MyrtleLion a speedy recovery. I hope you have somebody bringing you some lovely treats.

I think that you're right. "Gender-critical" beliefs from Forstater are “that biological sex is real, important, immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity”

As you say, it is also the belief that biological sex is important and should not be mixed up with gender identity.

It was accepted as a belief by the EAT (para 117):

"In relation to the preliminary issue of whether the Claimant’s belief falls within s.10, EqA, we substitute a finding that it does."

All best wishes to MyrtleLion, hope you're feeling better soon!

Re logical fallacies in the respondents' supplementary, the first one that strikes me forcefully is the one about needing to demonstrate that transwomen are statistically just like other men. Para 10:

But more fundamentally, to be successful in the indirect discrimination claim, Mrs Peggie would require the Tribunal to find as a fact that trans women are, in all respects and for all purposes, indistinguishable from cis men. [...] Again, the protected characteristic of gender reassignment simply would not exist if as a matter of fact trans women and cis men were wholly indistinguishable.

Having based some piece of law on statistical differences between men and women we do not need to reargue it for every definable subset of men. Suppose, for example, Fife had allowed a gay man, not a transwoman, into the changing room and things had proceeded as before, until in the end the argument had said instead:

But more fundamentally, to be successful in the indirect discrimination claim, Mrs Peggie would require the Tribunal to find as a fact that gay men are, in all respects and for all purposes, indistinguishable from straight men. [...] Again, the protected characteristic of sexual orientation simply would not exist if as a matter of fact gay men and straight men were wholly indistinguishable.

I don't think anyone would be tempted by that argument, but I think the two are logically parallel. There's an attempt in para 8 to suggest that it's somehow important that a transwoman "presents, to the outside world, as a woman" - but no attempt to connect that into the argument and explain what difference it makes.

All I can say is, thank goodness they decided they were lucent rather than lucid; if they claimed to be the latter it would be really confusing, because they clearly are not.

i agree but the genderist arguments about privacy etc rely on the implausible idea that these men should be treated as if they were women at all times and the “othering” is treating them as if they are not just “women” like any other. It’s this fundamental piece of gaslighting at the heart of both JR’s and Translucent’s arguments.