Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton, following Employment Tribunal judgment - thread #58

[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), 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 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.

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 2025 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
Thread 57: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5457132-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-57 9 December 2025 to 11 December 2025

To the contrary, many women are leaving and talking about their vaginas slamming shut or being drier than the Sahara because they've realised that the man in question is too stupid to realise that doing nothing around the house is selfish and annoying.

I think what SP said in press conference was relevant to all this. She was never a campaigner, and didn't set out to bring a tribunal case. (Upton was the one wanging on about "hate and bigotry towards my people" from the outset of the "sad times :/" )

SP was a nurse with no legal training. I think elsewhere in the judgment Kemp says SP could have brought a claim instead of making "impermissible" comments in changing room.

SP said when questioned by Kemp that she didn't know what else she could have done and noone told her. He must be pretty effing oblivious to expect that a nurse in the middle of a 12 hour shift would be thinking through legal options all the while she needed to deal with her soiled clothing and get the hell out of the intimidating bloke doctor's way and back to work.

Kemp has a job that involves multiple breaks through the day, and if he declares a break the whole effing court stands for him to go first. He has no bloody idea what SP's working life entailed, and very little inclination to empathise.

I've done a quick search of JR's main and supplemental submissions for the word 'hierarchy'. It's not there.

You're right: I'm thinking of a different case that didn't go to a retrial.

The hierarchy comment - I was convinced I had heard a phrase like that, not in a judgement but from one of the lawyers in a GC case. A bit of googling finds BC himself mentioned no hierarchy of protected characteristics during one of Maya's cases - in the sense that Maya's protected characteristic of GC belief is not lesser than any other. Maybe he has used the phrase in other of his legal arguments on the subject? https://hiyamaya.net/livetweets-from-the-tribunal/

Ah, that's clear then. Thank you.

Nice one, HildegardP!
I like the first one, for obvious reasons

It couldn't be in Naomi's submissions could it? One of the Reddit lawyers was hoping it was but I don't think got as far as checking.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fJOZXwP4OozxKLffOdTPWP7zdQvA6u8q/view

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kzAYvbhcjaJbOCtY_Tp34NkhD-2e_2Zt/view?pli=1

Nope not there either

Ok so this is full circle. On a hunt for Asher case and references to hierarchy of rights....

Look what I found. Legal feminist, founded by Naomi Cunningham (she may well be the author legal feminist)

• Resolution of a conflict of rights is not assessed on who has the ‘better’ or more progressive cause: there is no hierarchy of rights;

This was the subject of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Ashers cake case where Christian owners of a bakery had refused to ice the message “Support Gay Marriage” onto a cake. The Court held that the service was not refused to the claimant because he was gay, but because the bakery would have refused to ice that particular message onto a cake for anybody, regardless of their sexual orientation.

https://www.legalfeminist.org.uk/2020/07/05/conflict-of-rights/

When I was studying Hamlet for A Level English at school, never in my wildest dreams did I ever think knowing the phrase ' hoisted by their own petard ' would come in so handy, but I seem to have found the need to use it an awful lot these past few years!😂

I mean I am happy to become a legal researcher for lazy judges.

If Kemp wanted a better quote:

Dr P Wilkins Respondents: Defence Science and Technology Laboratory
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/687e55f188c74f0fd15c96d5/Dr_P_Wilkins_v_Defence_Science_and_Technology_Laboratory_-6000548.2023-_Reserved_Judgment.pdf

139. There are many things that are not covered by the Equality Act 2010 as of right and there is no sanction thereunder for unpleasant or less favourable treatment because of those things. It is also clear that there is no hierarchy of protected characteristics. They are listed in alphabetical order in the EqA. The rights of an employee who holds a philosophical belief is entitled to be upheld as much as the rights of any particular sexual orientation, age, race etc. Whilst there may be conflict at times potentially between different protected characteristics (e.g. religion and sexual orientation), what is required is to balance those competing legal rights again as set out above.

Thank you. As ever, I am in awe of the breadth of knowledge and intelligence on these pages.

Have a look at who was counsel for Porton Down (DSTL)…

DSTL lost the Unfair Dismissal case against an employee forced out for GC beliefs

Yes our very own Jane Russell KC. She would have been pleased this week for about five minutes until she realised that Kemp had gubbed the whole thing and Naomi is going to wipe the floor the second time.

Silly Kemp - silly silly Kemp.

Oh I can retire!! Hurrah! Thank you. I will sleep tight tonight 😍

The bit I would add to this which are more difficult to access is the building standards bs6465 part 1 from 1984 which were the standards in place when the 1992 legislation was being drafted up. There are some crucial paragraphs about door gaps (my specialist subject!) and cubicles and rooms below.

The standards show clearly that a cubicle is not a room. It’s a bit like saying a wardrobe in a bedroom is a separate room.

This means when the 1992 legislation says that the only mixed sex toilet is one that is in a separate room, it does not mean a cubicle.

Here’s a couple of paragraphs from bs6465-1 (1984): ...where a range of WCs is provided, each in a separate cubicle within a single room, e.g. in schools, offices, factories, public buildings and public conveniences, it simplifies ventilation, cleaning and, to some extent, supervision and prevention of wilful misuse, if the cubicle walls terminate above the floor as well as below the ceiling. These advantages are gained only at the expense of a certain degree of privacy. Where cubicles are used, the whole room in which they are situated may be regarded as a single unit for the purposes of ventilation.
Where partition walls and doors of WC cubicles are kept clear of the floor, the clearance should be not less than 100 mm and not more than 150 mm. Partitions and doors that terminate below ceiling level should be not less than 2 m in height from the floor.’

Is there something in the water in Fife?

This afternoon I asked Copilot LLM 'give me a short list of PDF difference comparers for files or online' (& then lost the post bcos the thread was full), posting now just to mention that I found an archive version of the judgement before any changes (Dec 9th)
https: // web.archive.org/web/20251209022506/ https: // www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Peggie-v-Fife-Health-Board-and-another.pdf

edited to try & fix the URL - MN gets confused bcos h t t p s occurs twice - remove spaces to create link

https://knowledge.bsigroup.com/products/sanitary-installations-code-of-practice-for-the-design-of-sanitary-facilities-and-scales-of-provision-of-sanitary-and-associated-appliances

I can see why we don't have it - it costs £300

Having watched the first part of the tribunal and then closely followed the second part, it was full of drama but I really never expected the judgement to be equally so full of drama. I know it's awful and really really serious but my god, it's provided some much needed hilarity and entertainment ,
( mainly provided by you lot! )😂

I swear Naomi must have some form of legal pheremone that sends witnesses, judges, Mumsnet and the world at large totally batshit.

I mean Kemp putting Legal Feminist into a search LLM to use against Naomi is so meta I might actually have to go to bed

https://www.building.co.uk/news/bog-standards/3073120.article

Research has shown that women take almost three times as long as men to use toilet facilities, but the numbers of appliances provided for females are often fewer than for the same number of men, hence the ubiquitous queues at the ladies’ loos. The new standard generally increases the number of appliances for women and in no case will they have fewer appliances than men. This is an area where further research is required to produce accurate usage data, so the standard does not generally reduce male provision, although it would appear that there is sometimes overprovision for men.

The 1984 edition of BS 6465-1 (full title: Sanitary appliances. Code of practice for scale of provision, selection and installation of sanitary appliances) is an older, withdrawn British Standard that has been superseded multiple times (first by the 1994 version, then by the 2006 edition).

Availability
No free full PDF or official version of the 1984 edition is legally available online (BSI standards are copyrighted and not placed in public archives like archive.org).
It is not hosted on government sites, standards databases, or free repositories.
The full document must be purchased from BSI or authorized sellers if needed (though it's rare to find the 1984 version in print today).

(I am marking this for my reference for any toilet related research). I think @Keeptoiletssafe if it could be found surely some smart lawyers would want to pay a few hundred pounds for it.

The BSI are helpful.

I'm beginning to think so. There's no doubt that public bodies there are captured by all the nonsense.

On the other hand, even Tiffany Scott's brother went on the record as saying that Tiffany was 'at it'. Mind you, there were clues: in prison, he went through the following names: Andrew Burns; Obi Wan Kenobi; Mr Mighty Almighty; Mitzababy; Tiffany Scott.

Stunning and brave trans heroine, however.

My experience in Fife suggests to me that middle class youths cheer on gender nonsense - "There are 64 genders!" - but that working class kids have a rather more robust view.

There's also the fact that some Fife schools have been vying to achieve awards from certain organisations. When a famous actor visited a certain Fife school 'to tell them to be nice to one another' and wore the school tie on a talk show, the council started asking other schools why they weren't doing more for LGBTQ+.

However, the fact of the matter is that the criminal fraternity isn't daft. They'll say whatever they need to in order to get easier time in prison. (I'm given to understand that there's a substantial difference between the male and female prison estate in Scotland.

In the case of Upton, I've no doubt that his pals at Madras College and then at uni supported his delusions and made him feel special.

I've said on other threads that I've worked with girls who were trans identified, but they detransitioned - in two cases, it didn't happen until they'd left the school environment where their pals treated them as heroes.