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

Sandie Peggie judge urged to withdraw ruling ‘riddled with errors’

https://www.thetimes.com/article/c1287013-6d89-4670-a818-77fbecadbd8a?shareToken=f9ede3090ace85defdacc06ff2787d07

This has escalated at incredible speed.

They could rip through their £4 million war chest fast if they will insist on spaffing their money on defending the Challenors' political legacy. IIRC, the number of cases against them is only going up so that £200k p/a is a conservative figure.

If we know it's not JKR funding the case, I missed what we know it from. I did notice Sandie thanked the Darlington nurses and Christian Concern which led me to wonder whether it was the latter again - thanking the nurses themselves might be for personal support, but thanking CC if they weren't funding Sandie seemed a bit surprising. Given the fuss about CC funding the Darlington nurses, though, I wouldn't blame anyone for not confirming or denying that, whether or not it's the case. I think my guess is still JKR, though, because of the Sex Matters connection.

I knew a black colleague ( late 1980’s) who had been admonished for not conforming to the office dress code for wearing black tights instead of the accepted ‘skin’ coloured tights as in ‘nude’ tights. As she quite rightly pointed out they were her skin colour tights, how the managers couldn’t/didn’t see it was beyond comprehension. Thankfully times have changed.

One comment BTL in the Times is from an advocate who says, ‘In a way I feel sorry for the judge, because it is going to get worse before it gets worse still’

Woah. (my emboldening)

"In June Dame Victoria Sharp, president of the King’s Bench Division of the High Court of England and Wales, claimed there were “serious implications for the administration of justice and public confidence in the justice system if artificial intelligence is misused” and that lawyers misusing AI could face contempt of court proceedings and referral to the police."

7Gender reassignment
(1)A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.

I’m struggling to think of what other ‘attributes of sex’ there are other than the physiological sort. Legislators shouldn’t sloppily award themselves the latitude of non-biologists having a chat in down the pub.

I’m also bloody relieved the legislation does say ‘sex’ here and not ‘gender’. It opens a door to challenge.

There was a popular joke about Dunblane in our area of Scotland too.

What a clear, insightful, well reasoned and well researched article.

Big Sond should pay heed! Oooopppss too late.

When Naomi and crew come to town the game changes. Tables turned.

I'm posting here because it just came to mind...

Re 'vulnerable and marginalised' for this group.

I have worked with murderers, rapists, people at the highest end of risk categories. Guess what? Majority were also in the most 'at risk' categories too.

Just because you are vulnerable does not mean you do not pose a risk to others. At the highest end, for young people at least (as that is where my experience lies) the two converge. Unsurprisingly really.

This of course doesn't mean 'all people all the time' but I think for many people, they hear that someone is 'vulnerable ' and assume 'low risk'. This really is not true.

I doubt CC could afford to fund SP? Darlington is their biggest case yet I think, and they clearly struggled to recoup as much as they hoped for in the Darlington crowd funder.

They earned a difficult reputation for themselves with members of the Judiciary by going all the way through the sick children/hospital cases with young unqualified Pavel Stoilov representing the claimants. Mr Fetto was excellent when he took over, but they only appointed him for the final hearing.

MG + NC + CE + stenographers was quite extravagant, and now Ben Cooper joins the SP team. That is not a team funded by scrabbling around for donations.

Ffs

That's a bit excruciating.

It does make you wonder if he wasn't trying to give them the opportunity to create binding precedent by having to appeal to a higher court!

The z spellings might not be AI, it might be that it was typed up with the wrong language on the spell checker. Still poor form though.

Big Sond helpfully told us, so it’s Ok. Wearing women’s clothes, growing hair, wearing makeup and putting on an approximation of a women’s voice

The other problem with the "unblemished record" narrative is that a nurse who has genuine patient care complaints against her still has the right to a single-sex workplace changing room. All women, the cunty female kind, have the right to a single-sex workplace changing room if they have to change clothes at work.

This is one of the reasons why I keep quoting KJK: "right wing women are women". Our rights are not conditional upon us being "good girls". They wouldn't be rights if they were.

Hard agree. I used to work with an organisation that supported very neglected and disadvantaged children. Sadly, some of them went onto commit awful crimes against children when they were adults.

IANAL but I cannot see how the case against Upton could be dismissed and partially upheld against NHS Fife.

If there had been other complaints about Sandie - from a patient say, and they had completely codged up the suspension process, failed to hear her side, etc. etc. then I could understand, but this case was wholly about Upton. No Upton - no complaints about the changing room ........

Do we know what bearing this will have on the case against Kate Searle and Co?

I worry about black and Asian women on here being rightly insulted by a few posts minimising racist language

@Asianbrit has bothered to say things i agree with using a name that clearly identifies that she is of an ethnic origin

I do believe that we have gone backwards somewhat in what we accept.

i sat on a school bus trip in the seventies and heard a song that was sang with vim, the teachers did not stop it.

it went like this

come to Birmingham in the sun

where the N**rs outnumber you ten to one

some are black and some are tan

and some even come from Pakistan.

lovely little ditty innit

means no harm eh?

No racist sentiment behind it?

just a joke?

I saw splits in second wave feminism over this issue and cannot let this pass without comment.

No worries at all.

You do your own thing to wrangle your life into shape. You've contributed loads already.

Well quite. I'm Gen X and can only speak for the area I grew up in I suppose, but in my youth "Paki" wasn't considered a slur so it makes some kind of sense to me that possibly Sandie doesn't see it that way. (Tbf I know it is no longer an acceptable term).
I looked up the allegations and frankly I'm not impressed. Every disaster (natural or not) spawns a plethora of related "jokes" that people share. It's a natural human reaction and it doesn't tell us much about Sandie as a person that she shared a few of these.

I'm with you. You didn't make any point about whether Sandy deserves anything due to this but you were replying to downplaying of the racism.

There were some on the real-time threads at the time trying to minimise it - it's not relevant to the outcome - but while doing so there were some quite horrendous comments about "you'd have you be perfect to never use a racial slur" which I absolutely disagree with.

I didn't particularly want the same arguments rehashed again but the jokes were bloody awful, and to many would have been incredibly shocking to hear.

So I guess my point is asianbrit is not alone at finding those jokes unacceptable.

I was horrified when I was offered the possibility of material sourced from a cadaver for a gum graft (following an apicectomy). In the end, I opted for a graft taken from my palate. This was in a private dental hospital, Scotland.

I think I can safely say that not as single poster on this thread would say that isn't racist and totally unacceptable. And I think you also must know that, and for some reason you are pretending to not know that. I suspect it is because you are interested in labelling the women on this thread as racist, so you can ignore their actual opinions.

Continuation thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5459115-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-following-employment-tribunal-judgment-thread-59

I worry about black and Asian women on here being rightly insulted by a few posts minimising racist language

Why? because they can't speak up for themselves, they need a white saviour to do it for them.

Seriously do you not know how racist that sentiment is?