NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #56

[nauticant]

Judgment was handed down on 8 December 2025:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6936ce28a6fc97b81e57436a/S_Peggie_v_Fife_Health_Board__Dr_Upton.pdf

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 3 September to 1 October 2025
Thread 54: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5418690-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-54 from 28 September 2025
Thread 55: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5447019-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-55

Judge is using the Mary Archer analysis- remember the judge's comments when she gave evidence in her husband's trial: a vision of "elegance, fragrance and radiance". Of course she, university educated scientist, made a great impression.

No cognitive dissonance . No lies.

I do not share your sex fundamentalism , I think it is reductive and wrong.

I support DU. I'm glad she was cleared of any wrongdoing.

I do not wish to discuss my personal sexual preferences

@prh47bridge I’m interested in your opinion as to what might happen next ref the 1992 regs.

So why don't we just let all men into the women's facilities? We could rule out those who have been convicted of rape or assault, and just make it a free for all for the rest, yes?

Crossing the road has nothing to do with this. Neither does driving a car, nor plane crashes nor falling off ladders. Neither does a bad diet, or getting attacked by an XL bully, or meningitis, or any of the many other ways we are at risk. You do understand that, don't you? Or do you?

@Ohpleasegoawaynow - It will take me a while to read the judgement, so I'm not going to say much at this stage. However, note that the tribunal's view of the credibility of the various witnesses cannot be challenged directly on appeal. We may think they've got it wrong (and certainly the not-a-transcript from TT that I've read suggests to me that they've got it wrong), but their judgement on this point stands unless the EAT is convinced that the tribunal was biased. It is very difficult to convince the EAT that a tribunal was biased.

Is there any statement about why the promised notice of the judgment to the relevant parties wasn't adhered to? It's disappointing not to be able to have a comprehensive analysis yet.

42 days so six weeks give or take.

Takes a while to consider whether appeal should proceed.

Date for hearing could be a good while off.

The derailment of the thread away from the judgement and towards the MNHQ-endorsed "halo"-polishing of the Righteous has proved very successful.

But at least it has clearly laid bare the Righteous ideology that only some people (i.e. them) deserve institutionally-enforced "halo"-polishing, to express their emotional upset at non-validating speech of others and to demand their own boundaries are adhered to.

Is it possible that the appeals are rolled into one?

It was a very long case but am I right in thinking that most of the points of law (in any appeal) won't be that dependent on believing one witness over another?
Perhaps the DU harassment part. But not the general ramifications of making the changing room open to males.

It wasn’t promised. It was asked for with consensus.

EJ said it was a question for the president (of the Tribunal).

A few thoughts:

• they issued their own press release to push their own narrative. They didn't want the other parties to be prepared
• it’s timing with Kelly v Leonardo seems suspicious
• they dumped it ahead of Christmas with NC acting in another trial needing an appeal - with 300 pages in there - maybe hoping not all Scottish toilet/ changing cases are appealed
• sheer rudeness - they don’t seem to like Naomi and Sandie standing up for women’s rights so why concede to their request

Very odd and very poor form. Just like the judgment.

Is that 42 elapsed days or 42 working days?

I suspect the next event will be the appeal in the MK v Leonardo case. Unlike the tribunal in this case, which seems to think deciding what the regulations mean is a matter for the criminal courts, the judge in that case clearly decided that "women" in the regulations includes trans-women. As per my first post, I don't think that is a credible position given the FWS judgement, so there is a decent chance that will be overruled by the EAT on appeal. Whilst that will, in theory, only decide what the regulations mean regarding toilets, it is difficult to see how anyone could realistically argue that the words "men" and "women" mean one thing in the clause about toilets but something different in the clauses about washing facilities and changing rooms.

No - two different people - different orgs - different regulations.

In the days before Universal we had Unisex which would become superfluous if single sex weren’t single sex.

The experts all got together in 2008 to discuss toilets for a government report into public toilet provision. It would make the whole report nonsense if single sex wasn’t meant to be single sex.

Building standards, regulations, health and safety legislation, and even arguably the Sexual Offences Act all falls down if single sex doesn’t mean single sex.

Look forward to the analysis - take detailed notes as you read

Please elaborate. In what way precisely do you imagine reality to be "reductive"?

And why is talk about changing rooms being linked to 'sexual preferences'?

I am not sexually fundamentalist.

The judge said for women who are happy to get changed in front of men then Fifes set up was ok. If you support Dr Upton, with his penis and gonads, and you wish to change with him that’s your preference.

Would not like getting changed in front of a man but do it anyway?
Or do you pretend the man’s not a man to cope?

I would be very interested in your opinion on how this works when Kate Searle and others are being brought before an ET at some future date and their actions -e.g. sending around emails etc. hinge on finding BU's claims of distress credible. If this view is challenged in these new cases could we find that the issue of BU's credibility is revisited. (I assume Dr Upton could be an intervener in those trials in that case)? IMNAL so may have misunderstood.

I have a question about the 1992 Workplace regs and the SC judgement in FWS. (Wow, there's a sentence I never thought I'd write. Right up there with having to tell my toddler that "we don't lick the bus".)

So ...

In both this and the Leonardo case, the judge has been hesitant to say that the SC judgement requires workplace facilities (toilets or changing rooms) to be single sex, because FWS spoke only to the Equality Act. And the 1992 Workplace regulations are a different bit of legislation. Is that right?

However, there are also situations where the EA would apply in a workplace changing room, no? For example, if there was a dispute about a trans woman using the female toilets but other men not being allowed to. FWS established that the comparator in the EA for a trans woman, irrespective of GRC status (eg a male with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment) is a man without the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. So if employers want to exclude men from designated female facilities, this needs to be on the basis of sex, otherwise they are open to discrimination claims on this basis.

My question is why does this not apply in the NHS Fife context? The judgement said that there was merit to both the claimant and respondent interpretations of who should be in what room. But this doesn't make sense. In theory, NHS Fife could have provided mixed or single occupancy changing facilities. Or something. But they didn't. They had separate facilities used by men and women. Given that they did that, what is the reasoning that the FWS judgement can't be extrapolated to the 1992 Workplace regs? It feels really bizarre.

Building standards, regulations, health and safety legislation, and even arguably the Sexual Offences Act all falls down if single sex doesn’t mean single sex.

This is where I'm having trouble understanding why anyone is trying to pretend there is a separate differentiation between men and women that isn't sex. Surely they would need to set out very clearly what this is? It would have significant knock-on effects.

I see that it's possible, under the Employment Appeal Tribunal Rules (24(5)(e)).

I wonder if the questions of law are sufficiently similar. Certainly the overarching topic is the same.

Points of law are never about which witness you believe. If this goes to appeal, unless the matter of bias is raised (which is highly unlikely), the question will be whether the tribunal has misdirected itself as to the law, misunderstood the law, applied the law wrongly, or reached a conclusion or finding of fact material to the outcome of the case without any evidence to support that conclusion. It is also possible to appeal on the grounds that the decision was so obviously wrong that no reasonable tribunal directing itself properly on the law could possible have reached this decision. I have not had a chance to read the judgement yet, but I would expect any appeal to centre around whether the tribunal has got the relevant law wrong.

Oh sorry. I forgot - this is mumsnet. If you challenge gender critical ideology and offer a dissenting perspective in a discussion about public policy, you must expect be subject to a pile-on of derision and demeaning comments until you shut up.

If you request that people stop making demeaning, personal comments - you will be mocked even more because it just exposes the extent of your dreadful hypocrisy!

Someone will say things to you like "we get it, you like getting undressed in front of men". Or they might call you a troll , or a penis panderer.

But imagine whining. this is just "non-validating speech". Did you really expect to be validated by not being called a dick-lover?

Some people really do need to stop polishing their halos.