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

I see the Good Laugh Project is trumpeting the EHRC withdrawing its interim guidance as some kind of win. In reality, this appears to be a move designed to put pressure on the government to approve the new draft statutory guidance.

Thank you for that. I interpreted the reason for the withdrawal of the interim guidance the same way you have and so was very confused by the Laugher’s trumpeting.

Me too.

Thing is it was the interim guidance so seems silly to challenge it in the first place. And the news item posted seem to confuse the guidance before parliament with the interim document.

Thank you @prh47bridge that is very helpful. I had got as far as realising that the GLP’s interpretation must be idiocy/casuistry/just plain wrong but not figured out what the EHRC’s motivation could be.

I think it’s more likely they see it as a quick “out” from an irritating, distracting and pointless legal battle.

From the Guardian's piece on this: "the EHRC’s interim advice, which said the supreme court ruling meant transgender people should not be allowed to use toilets meant for the gender they live as..."

There's something about the wording that really pisses me off. I think it's "allowed". They have never been allowed. They've just done it and in so doing, utterly ignored the rights of women to single sex spaces. It shouldn't have had to go to the UKSC. It should always have been a simple matter of manners and consideration for others. But when those others are just women, it appears all bets are off.

It's the Guardian. That's what they do. It may also be why the Scott Trust who run them have had to sell the Observer. The answer is simple. Don't support them, no matter how often they beg and the same goes for any firm that doesn't respect women.

It's just plain wrong.

The interim advice just followed the SC ruling on whether a GRC changes somebody's sex for the purposes of the EA.

Even the Scottish Government accepted that somebody without a GRC has no right to use opposite sex services.

You could, as a gimmick, create 'feminine' and 'masculine' toilets, but under current law you would not be able to exclude men or women from either.

I'm sure that there will be former Guardian Women's page writers turning in their graves at the idea that the Guardian should promote the idea of "living as a gender".

Some female Guardian writers, including Carole Cadwalladr have started a newsnsite, The Nerve.

https://www.thenerve.news/

It's also just wrong.

The toilets aren't "meant for the gender they live as". The law doesn't mention gender. They are meant to be used by people of a particular sex. Gender identity, as with religion, is immaterial.

The Nerve looks interesting, although I don't think I could bear to read that smug twat Stewart Lee on 'flags'!

Right. I'm attempting the respondents' closing submissions.

It's a good contents list. I'll give them that. Nice and clear, chronological. Can't fault it.

We then kick off with an appeal to emotion. Nice try, not sure it's legally relevant. Unfortunately it includes something that was admitted in examination to be untrue (comparison to a person known to be a convicted rapist). Didn't happen.

Then the claim that a 2-month suspension isn't 'short', and that taking 4 months to even begin an investigation, and a year from the incident to conclude it, is 'normal'.

The list of events forming part of the investigation also misses out the witness tampering. And the not-an-investigation-investigation.

Next we're on to points of law. Section 24 of the workplace regulations is quoted, including the sentence about separate facilities for men and women. Immediately followed by a claim that section 24 'does not mention sex'.

The same paragraph claims that because Peggie could have changed elsewhere there was no detriment to her 'health or propriety' by Upton changing in the locker room. Technically arguable, perhaps. But misses 2 points: there was nothing to stop Upton changing in any or all of the other female changing/locker rooms; even if Peggie changed elsewhere she would still have need to go into the locker room to use the lockers. And may well have encountered a naked man by doing so.

I'm on paragraph 18. If I were the judge I'd be cracking open the whisky at this point, in the knowledge that there are another 196 pages still to get through.

Para 19 is devoted entirely to explaining that a failure to adhere to the workplace regulations is a crime, and setting out the possible punishments.

IANAL, but is is normal in a tribunal to draw attention to the fact that your client has broken not merely employment but also criminal law?

Croft v Royal Mail concluded that a trans person past a certain point of transition should be allowed to use the toilets of their new gender.

IIRC Naomi's argument is that this is irrelevant because it pre-dates the GRA and EA. But even if she's wrong it doesn't help Fife/Upton because the Croft case also decided that the claimant hadn't reached that point because they'd only recently transitioned at work. Just like Upton.

Look at the thing over there!

Squirrel!

DU is a man, sorry, woman!

Regulations!
GRA!
Transwomen are women!
Shiny!
Sandie is mean!

Chuck enough rubbish at the judge and he might not realise JR can't do her job.

FWS seems reasonably fairly explained, but I don't see - and the submission doesn't explain, at least in this legal background section - how it helps their case.

Begum is about a school's duty to educate, and about tension between children's autonomy and their parents' beliefs. Looks like irrelevant filler.

Thanks for this, @MyrtleLion . Do you know if this publication will adopt a fair and properly investigative approach to the issues that concern gender critical people? Does this issue figure on their alienation from the guardian?

The bit about lots of guidance being wrong - I can see that as an argument for Fife having a reasonable belief they were following the law.

Bananarama!

The attempt to relitigate FWS, largely relying as it does on DSDs, would be irrelevant even if it were within the scope of the tribunal. Which it isn't.

First proposition that workplace regs don't mandate single sex facilities because they allow mixed sex ones if they're individual lockable rooms. The Fife ones aren't individual locakble rooms.

Propositions 2 to 4: 'nobody knows what sex is anyway'.

Proposition 5: wrong comparator. JR needs to listen to Michael Foran, who's explained multiple times that excluding a man from the women's facility is (permitted) discrimination on sex not on gender reassignment.

Proposition 6: our old friend Article 8. No, it does not breach your right to privacy, because everyone knows anyway.

Proposition 7, not really a proposition, just setting out comparator.

"Sandie Peggie's Strong Views". Flimsy, at best. One bit of evidence seems to be that somebody else called her names. But even if all the hearsay and assumptions are correct, NHS staff are allowed to take advantage of NHS discount schemes for hotels, and racists have rights too. And it's telling that one of the people giving evidence on these 'strong views' and SP's willingness to.discuss them at work says she has no idea of SP' views on trans people. Which suggests they're not actually that strong.

"Naomi Cunningham's a big meanie" section. Even if true, that has no bearing on the facts of the case or the actions of anyone at Fife before they encountered her.

Is this setting up an appeal? Are hurty feels in the witness box grounds for appealing?

"Logical fallacies underpinning the claim that transwomen are men"

I don't think JR knows what a logical fallacy is. It's certainly not 'providing evidence I don't agree with'. And the whole bit on DSD's is totally irrelevant to both that question and the case as a whole.

But the necessary fact is not that TW are men, anyway; it's that they aren't women. Which she's stated herself in her other submissions.

This article (by a woman) blames the “feminisation” of the workplace. I have some sympathy for her views, thankful that I work somewhere robustly in the middle of masculine and feminine approaches:
https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/

Surely a trans woman must be a man, otherwise the 'trans' bit makes no sense?

Wow, fascinating article - so interesting to think of cancel culture as being the result of the way that groups of women tend to socialise (as compared to the way groups of men tend to socialise). I feel like I need to digest this one for a bit - it feels very uncomfortable to think about for some reason, but it has a lot that rings true.