NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #57

[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 28 September 2025 to 21 November 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 19 November 2025 to 8 December 2025
Thread 56: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5456749-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-56 8 December 2025 to 9 December 2025

In reply to Dennis Noel Kavanagh's lawyerly tweet about the Forstater invented quote and the AI implication, 'This is most unusual', polymath novelist Philip Hensher replied:
'Masterful understatement, Dennis. It seems curious given that the judge couldn’t even type'
So is he suggesting someone else wrote this and used AI to do it?

Oh good. Would really love to hear her perspective.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/d828135b-003c-44b3-b4f2-c5a84a08e65c?shareToken=21016725d3e8b3a5db94b3fdd59f7a70

Ah yes, but he's a big important man isn't he? As we've now found out he doesn't consider women to be actual human beings but just dresses or 'femininity' whatever that is.

The idea that anyone female would actually dare to correct such a big important man or even that there are men that actually do their fucking jobs properly, including the detailed bit, and don't just wing it and rely on being important and male is probably news to him.

After such terrible dishonesty in this judgement I wonder if previous judgements could be in question too? I wonder how much shit he's made up in the past?

Quite a good article illustrating that governments are looking to go with whichever version they like regardless that the SC trumps everything - and this judgment is looking increasingly likely to stand in the long term for obvious reasons - and the absolute mess of confusion the Labour Party have not just allowed to happen but actively made worse.

This should have been nipped in the bud in April when the judgment was released.

Well, if someone has kidnapped Big Sond and held him prisoner in a cellar while they cobble together some flim-flam using AI, I suppose we'll all feel really guilty for being mean about him. But that seems more likely than that an experienced judge conceived this judgment, wrote it up and published it

Radio Scotland just seemed to have correspondent Lindsay Bues?

I feel really worried we're headed for anarchy where it really will just be the biggest and strongest who win.

Because if a judge can basically make things up in a judgement, and he's so sure there will be no accountability that he's willing to do it in a case with this much media interest, then there's no point to societal structures anymore really. Justice is a myth, the process, the law is a myth. There is no point to any of it if this stands.

People like Kellie Jay have been essentially saying this for years. All this lawfare is basically a waste of time and money, a way for men like this Judge to get rich off the backs of poorer taxpayers. We've had the SC judgement based in reality and still this shit.

We are very lucky as women that public opinion is in fact more progressive than the lanyard classes, being against child abuse and complete removal of women rights. Public opinion, and politicians who are willing to state facts, is going to be what ends this child-abusing, woman-hating madness. Clearly not judges like Kemp.

It puts every woman in the country in the position of having to actively assert their most basic rights and be treated as a trouble maker for it rather than requiring employers and public facilities to do the right thing in the first place.

Yes, I’m pretty sure they mentioned Baroness Falkner though!

It’s just a few bumps in the road.

People have been sold a lie the emperor is wearing clothes for 20 years.

Suddenly they have been told he’s stark bollock naked and in the ladies changing rooms.

Employment Judges like Sutherland and Kemp are mid tier employment lawyers in Scotland. They’re also nicely middle class.

This is beyond their skill set or intelligence.

It will get sorted on appeal. It takes time. It’s hard to wait.

But it’s hard for everyone to wake up from the mass delusion. That’s why they’ll even lie in a judgment. Serious stuff but indicative of how far the ideology has taken hold.

😁Made me laugh out loud. Given we're not actually getting paid (unlike Judge Kemp), we could ask ChatGPT but then again we have morals and some sense of dignity, so nah.

I'd be up for a FWR hive mind list of issues to include though, just to make sure I've got them all.

Just to point out, Baroness Falkner is no longer of the EHRC. Her term ended 30 November.

And not to be confused with "Charlie" Baron Falconer, former Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice..

Yes - but previously you couldn’t say you wanted a single sex space without being classed a bigot.

The NHS policy said was harassment not to use preferred pronouns and Peggie should get reported etc.

I hope it's just a bump in the road. Unfortunately I think it may also be indicative of how piss poor and deceitful many public sector employees are.

His conduct in Gillian Philip's case was offensive too.

In both he allowed in evidence that was calculated to abuse a woman, with no actual relevance to the case. He clearly has an anti-woman bias and shouldn't be a judge at all IMO if he can't follow the law.

Anyway we can set up a shared doc to capture any of this?

Anyone got a link to that or specifics? Would be useful to show judicial bias.

Did she appeal?

It’s been a long time since I felt such vicarious professional embarrassment.

Bloody hell, Kemp. You’re a laughing stock.

I'm not sure that writing longhand is in itself evidence of poor IT skills. Many hold to the idea that 'writing is thinking'.

Kemp may have poor IT skills but I'm not sure we can know from that example.

They were probably just enjoying some understated intellectual high jinks banter?

I think we’d imagined him of greater intellectual and critical prowess based on our own readings of what was going on rather than his because he was largely silent!

That being said, to my mind, there is a deafening hand at play which is perhaps also due to the other members of the panel.

I suspect that in their discussions they have introduced their own thinking based on the ‘training’ they have encountered in their own workplaces and which he hasn’t to had thr time or critical capacity to unpick or question.

The length to me, suggests, that thing is True Crime fans know all too well that liars tend to go on and on and on in a bid to justify the lie and it feels like that to me. The more he encountered logical dissonance the more he tries to work his way through it rather than address the lack of logic in the original thinking.

I suspect the bit about not feeling ‘empowered’ to follow hyperlinks to actual evidence is folk who’ve been told that following links is like phishing and thr click allows them access — I mean completely ignorant thinking about modern citation methods.

perhaps if they’d thought to include hyperlink to the judgments quoted they might have clocked their own mistakes.

To me it doesn’t read like AI and I don’t think anyone who doesn’t feel empowers to use hyperlinks will be using AI but I suspect the mistakes are due to copying the analysis of others rather than going to source which is just as bad, really, in a legal judgment.

The EAT judgement comes up on the gov.uk search. I looked but didn't find a Kemp ET judgment. I may have just missed it but I wondered if the EAT was referring to unpublished preliminary hearing? As the preliminaries seemed to have focused on whether GP met criteria of an employee.

This is a test of parliamentary democracy. I am confident (fingers tightly crossed) that democracy will win eventually, through the courts and through public opinion. However, it has been a real eye-opener to see which political parties and individual politicians are quite happy to subvert democracy when it suits

Honestly, you try to take some time out again, and the Peggie decision comes in.

Halfway through the previous thread, finding the comments and analysis really interesting and helpful and, reading extracts from the judgement, agreeing, sadly...

One thing that I've not seen mentioned yet, though (although it may well have been in the 40 pages yet to read!)...

Is the female capacity for empathy part biological imperative - an urgent need to "read" other humans to assess intention and risk? Is that a thing?

Either way, the difficulty both Upton and the judge appear to have in empathising with the female experience may show just how much it matters that sex means sex not just in physical spaces, but also in positions of influence in society - why FWS matters re: not just single-sex spaces, but in equal representation etc.

I agree with everyone who says the judgement seems quite blind to what it means to move through the world in a female body. IANAL & all that, but it does feel like a default-male interpretation of what it means to be human may have shaped it, from Upton's sex being unclear and stereotypical markers of femininity, through degrees of transition, to perceptions of risk... The law isn't an ass, but a man. There's no sense of what it means to navigate a world in which half of the people you encounter could kill you with their hands if they took a fancy to it, and half... couldn't. I think Upton at some point showed that he, too, had no conception of the fear a female may feel in an enclosed space with a male.

Edited as posted too early & needed massive editing to make sense - of course most of the above's been said, just the bit about empathy is maybe new (but probably not!)?

Quite.

You might sneer at her for being the wrong sort, but you must still separate her and the man immediately or you're guilty of harassment. All she has to do is register that complaint.

And yes, it's going to be very uncomfortable and embarrassing and difficult for her, the man involved who has been using the women's facilities, and all their colleagues. You couldn't really design a system more likely to cause distress, stress, bad feeling and to raise friction between employees. It would immediately fall foul of the Equality Act on those grounds: duties are anticipatory, (it is evidently obvious that not all women consent and need/want single sex spaces and will complain, particularly once the word gets out that girls, there's a system to escape now and it has to work), and the indirect discrimination of putting the woman and the man involved in this very difficult situation is not going to pass muster legally.

You would think an ET Judge would be across this as a part of his brief.