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

Seems quite possible this is where it came from, then. Judge fed JR's submission into AI and it spat out that judgement.

I've said elsewhere that I had to explain to a very dear friend, active for many years in local politics (and very well regarded), why people were voting for Farage. She said she thought it was because he gave the impression of really caring for them. In my view it goes so much deeper than that. The mainstream parties have completely abandoned the 'lower orders' - working class, lower middle - to benefits/low wages/high housing costs, while pushing through policies that were never discussed or actively voted against (trans BS, high immigration, massive housebuilding and development in some rural areas).

Now they will become aware of decisions like this one (with its glaring errors), and people arrested for daring to express their wrongthink.

And people like my friend will be horrified if Reform wins the next election, and will blame it on people being duped, misled, racist, intolerant, whatever, rather than seeing that state over-reach has been a massive factor.

Same with the Democrats in the US. They lost the last election far more than Trump won it.

Fuck knows who I will vote for. All the current shower abrogated their responsibility to the people who voted for them by failing to uphold manifesto commitments, and putting major changes (like ignoring women's rights) to the electorate.

Rant over.

Beth and his insistence he would treat a patient who had specifically requested single sex care only?

Yes, that's a whole other can of worms, isn't it?

Tell me more about your toilet situation- I'm exceptionally well read on it this week.

So...People who understand these things...

Is it possible to appeal the aspersions cast on Sandie by pointing out that Upton agreed that she hadn't mentioned Isla Bryson and also by pointing out that the truthfulness about flooding wasn't something that the judge could discount?

I'm still seeing some male arsewipes on FB Fife news crowing that Sandie Peggie harassed Upton.

Super! 'Dikigorosophilia' it is. Now can we have a flag, and a day, please?😁

I’ve struggled to keep up with these fast-moving threads so trying to work out a summary of points from the clever Miss Marples and legal brains considering the issues relevant to appeal and I'm sure I've missed loads and have run out of time:

• Kemp seems to have misunderstood the binding effect of For Women Scotland, which definitively established that ‘sex’ in the Equality Act means biological sex.
• If the tribunal accepted the Respondents' argument that the Claimant needed to prove trans women are ‘functionally identical’ to other males to establish group disadvantage, this fundamentally undermines FWS and creates an impossible evidential burden to sex-based claims in that it makes anything which considers sex discrimination or which might seek consider sex as a protected characteristic unworkable.

• The well-established disadvantages women face when males are present in intimate spaces, relating to safety, privacy, and dignity, are matters of judicial knowledge (ie that should not require additional proof (Chalmers, J. (2017) ‘Judicial Knowledge’, in Scottish Evidence Law Essentials. United Kingdom: Edinburgh University Press) and so it seems nonsensical to deny, given FWS, that men who identify as transgender women are not exceptions to that existing knowledge. The mental gymnastics in the judgment to reject information about the studies which demonstrate men who identify as trans women are not exceptions to this knowledge -– ‘In our view, having read all of the documents, there is very far from sufficient reliable evidence to establish as a fact that a trans woman who is legally and biologically male is a greater risk to any person assigned female at birth within a changing room environment at a workplace than another woman assigned female at birth’(1049) – should have logically been countered with the knowledge that it is, however, an established fact that women are at risk to men and men, as clarified by FWS, does, of course include trans women. Rejecting the supplementary submissions from Fair Play for Women on the grounds that the statistics that demonstrate TW in prisons demonstrate that knowledge of male pattern behaviour could only be accessed through hyperlinks seem irrelevant, however idiotic (‘They may have been obtained from what appears to be hyperlinks in the report but it is not appropriate for us to seek out evidence not presented by the parties’ (1048) – clicking on source documents cited as hyperlinks is in now world construed as seeking out evidence not presented by the parties).

• The tribunal also appears to have committed serious procedural errors by permitting the Respondents to run an ‘objectionable manifestation’ defence without proper pleading, leaving the Claimant unable to properly meet a case she had no notice of. This might be particularly prejudicial given the defence was never particularised even in final submissions. The Respondents never identified which specific words or conduct constituted objectionable manifestation separate from the protected belief itself. Whilst the submission from the respondent stated that ‘The way that the Claimant, Mrs Sandie Peggie (“Mrs Peggie”), treated Dr Upton – by asking about her chromosomes, calling her a man, and comparing her to a convicted rapist – was clearly an inappropriate or objectionable expression of her gender critical’ (10) this s disputed in the evidence of both Peggie and Upton. Upton agreed that she had not said rapist or named any individual but mentioned ‘prisons’ and where the judgment says; ‘there was an admitted fact that 'C referred to the "women's prison incident", that is the Isla Bryson/Adam Graham case.' It is taken from the claimant's pleadings, at paragraph 13 of the Response Table which the admitted fact cross references.’ I’m not sure where that para is to be found as it doesn’t seem to be in claimants submissions (what is the responses table?) but it is also worth noting that ‘that is the Isla Bryson/Adam Graham case’ is not a quote in that para, ie it the panel making an assumption and going on to find that Peggie saying she was unaware of Bryson at the time as lacking in credibility:* * ‘In light of the circumstances of that case, which involved a person who as a man raped two women, who then commenced to transition to female including the change of name, and where an issue arose when initially placed in a women's prison, which is a matter of particular concern, and of interest, to those with gender critical beliefs such as the claimant, that evidence seeking to distance herself from the remark which related to a rapist was we considered not credible.’ (630)

• Further errors likely include misunderstanding the relevance of the 1992 Workplace Regulations, and by accepting that women uncomfortable with the arrangement should simply use inferior alternative facilities – effectively requiring women to accommodate males in female spaces rather than protecting the sex-based designation of those spaces. And if the tribunal accepted the Respondents' re-characterisation of the ‘female changing room’ as merely a ‘locker room’ without addressing their express pleaded admission that it was used by female staff ‘to get dressed and undressed,’ this would represent both a failure to hold parties to their pleadings and an inadequate engagement with the evidence.

• There is also the additional issue of copying language from the Respondents’ submissions such as ‘assigned male at birth’ which carries a clear perception of bias and suggests that Kemp has not sought out the correct guidance on neutrality in these kinds of cases.

Not sure but right now I'm very interested in getting a copy so any clever people think of any ideas let me know.

@EdithStourton

I spoiled my ballot paper last time round by writing "What is a woman?"

Couldn't bring myself to vote Tory and all the other candidates had been captured.

I had an independent candidate I could vote for, but otherwise I was just going to let my youngest write "POO" all over the ballot paper.

So...to borrow a phrase from my Glaswegian brethren: the judge's erse is oot ra windae?

The story is that the small LBGTQ+ desk exercised control over reporting, rejecting anything GC. But who gave it this extraordinary power? That’s what I’d like to know. Maybe I need to listen to the SEEN in journalism podcast again.
What I am seeing recently is stuff like this appearing, which is genuinely awful but I can’t help thinking has surfaced to drive a counter narrative to the puberty blockers trial (it features a transwoman).

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g6348qegxo

This was posted on another thread - the Wings page here
https://wingsoverscotland.com/strike-one/

refers to 'Not For Gays' as an intervenor in Kemp J's judgment! What is that /what is it meant to be?!

Oh my goodness following this case really is a roller coaster of emotions. I was devastated when I heard the result but thrilled that it's been found to be embarrassingly (maybe career ending) full of nonsense. I have as much sympathy for the judge as he had for Sandie.

Anyway, it's reminded me to write a formal complaint letter to my local hospital about them ignoring the Supreme Court ruling. I won't allow them to be able to say that no-one complained. That's something we can all do.

JR’s quote also refers to something which the SC didn’t say. It refers in para 248 to them not considering that the biological sex definition removed protection from trans people, nothing to do with a “hierarchy of rights”, which is just JR’s conceptualising of it. Maybe that’s where Kemp got the idea and didn’t check the SC judgment but assumed that is what it says?

This ^^ is what infuriates me the most (out of a long list of what infuriates me) because these liberal knee jerk anything goes but yet offended at the slightest provocation progressives are the ones fully opening the door to the likes of Trump and Farage. Pushing it wide open and waving voters in. In doing so, they are complicit in allowing Trump to subsequently demolish democracy and erode many citizens rights including women’s rights.

I recall one woman Latino voter saying ahead of the 2024 election that she’d normally be a democratic voter but that she did not agree that TWAW so felt that she could no longer vote for her Democratic candidate.

If the left had not swung so far left so as to lose centrist voters, the right would not have enlarged. Just really drives me to despair this lack of joined up thinking and lack of strategic insight into public sentiments by the Democrats and by Labour, Greens etc And the thing is, they’re still at it! Electing bloody Polanski as leader of the Greens, all these backbench Labour MPs wringing their hands trying to gerrymander the SC ruling and delaying guidance.

It is all going to end in tears because of their liberal sanctimonious virtue signalling. And we will all suffer for it!

You've inspired me to make shortbread today....
The sort with mincemeat in the middle, which is appropriate, given what is being made of this judgement.

Just answering my own question - looks like it's a group called Not All Gays. It's related to Sandy being portrayed as homophobic and the dragging of her daughter into it.

Yesterday I asked chat gpt where the quote about hierarchy of protected characteristics may have come from. It went straight to the error in Sandie's case and commented about AI hallucinating it, which made me laugh.

It pointed out it appears in a document from Aston university on the EA 2010. On further googling I found out in a few more commentaries, including University of Durham. Is it possible it was scrapped from one of these? Lots of other places talking about hierarchies, hierarchies of rights or needs, but not so many using that specific wording about protected characteristics.

Yes exactly. It’s a subtle FU to being told they have to write more factually by including a story about the barbaric use of ECT on gay people and then lumping ‘conversion therapy’ as one big mix, but which includes talking therapy.

100%. I hate Trump with all my guts but couldn't have voted for someone who appointed "Rachel" Levine and celebrated Mulvaney as an example.

The Record are team Peggie. They referred to:
'An army of motivated sleuths on social media'! 😁

In general, the EAT cannot overturn the ET's findings of fact.

They can throw the whole lot out of the window by deciding the ET was biased and sending the case back to be heard by a different ET.

They can overturn a specific finding if there was no evidence to support it (for example, if the tribunal had decided SP was guilty of patient mistreatment but none of the witnesses had made any such allegation), or they have failed to consider relevant evidence (one of the reasons this judgement is so much longer than the SC in FWS is that the ET has to set out the events that led to the case being brought, list all the evidence and say what they thought of it, whereas the SC rarely has to bother with that level of detail), or the ET's finding is plainly wrong or perverse. The EAT treats the findings of the ET with considerable deference because the ET has seen the witnesses and heard them give evidence, whereas the EAT has not. It is therefore very difficult to persuade the EAT that a finding is plainly wrong or perverse.

Thanks for offering @MetaCertificateAnnotationsJudgmentFINAL I am uncomfortable right now sharing any more detail on a public forum but I do appreciate all the information and links and gathering into my own wee set of facts and refs!

I think this change goes beyond what is allowed by the rules. The slip rule allows courts to correct accidental errors, omissions or clerical mistakes. I think this goes beyond that definition. I suspect Kemp will be criticised by the EAT for making this change in addition to the criticisms they will clearly make of the original judgement.