Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton, following Employment Tribunal judgment - thread #59

[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.

Following handing down of the judgment on 8 December 2025, on 11 December 2025, it was announced by Sandie Peggie and her legal team that they would be pursuing an appeal.

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
Thread 58: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5458443-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-following-employment-tribunal-judgment-thread-58 11 December 2025 to 12 December 2025

”A complaint about an employment judge must be made in writing to the president. It may be sent by post to the Office of the President, Employment Tribunals (Scotland), The Glasgow Tribunals Centre, 3 Atlantic Quay, 20 York Street, Glasgow, G2 8GT or to [email protected].”

Laughed hard at this - thank you

I fully understand why we can't have a laughing emoji but if ever a post deserved one, this has made me howl.😂

If this goes back to square 1 for a retrial (and by this point I don't see how it can properly be dealt with otherwise; fixing only the errors of law and ignoring the errors of fact would be rather like relaunching the Titanic with a shiny new coat of paint and an unfilled hole) would it be possible to roll it up with the upcoming case against Searl et al? It would surely save time and costs to do so.

Presumably yes? The press reports noted that the Searle et al case was entered and then sisted (paused) pending the outcome of the first case.

JK Rowling: Peggie tribunal judge behaving scandalously

https://www.thetimes.com/article/54ccfb78-9441-4c21-a161-da17c61495d2?shareToken=67f1752c7cff88690818538fb7a453a9

After the Sandie Peggie debacle, the SNP must get off the fence

https://www.thetimes.com/article/a4c99045-5e91-4bde-87dd-ba0f39838ec0?shareToken=19665b2963282ca0690c57fe05e8fea2

Some twit is going to try to report her for murmuring the judge and then they'll have to spend time and money revoking the law on that as being anti-democratic.

Seeing some of the things Tory Ministers and right wing newspapers have been saying about judges in the past few years it is probably a good thing that that law does not seem to apply in England.

I read with a wry smile earlier a LinkedIn spat earlier today between two "trans allies": one person pointing out the hallucinated quote from Maya's case and the other telling them not to repeat the arguments of "anti-trans" campaigners!

So for consideration - and confirmation from those in the room. Sleuthing not all my own work. Stewart v Tayside Health Board, Case No. 4108777/2018 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5d28991040f0b64a84cda410/Stewart_v_Tayside_health_Board-4108777.2018-Final.pdf

This case shows that L Brown (sitting on a panel with Kemp) disclosed that she was a former council member of the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) Tribunal and had left that role in October 2016.

careappointments.com/care-news/scotland/90488/new-members-appointed-to-scottish-social-services-council/
Lorraine Brown – is a HR and project management professional with an honours degree in Business with Languages, and Associate Membership of the CIPD. Lorraine’s background is mainly in the private sector. Lorraine also brings to the board experience from the public sector – she was Census Regional Manager for the 2011 census for Falkirk and West Lothian, an employer lay member with the Employment Tribunals Service, and sits on the Rights of Audience Committee for the Law Society of Scotland. Lorraine has also helped to care for her mother for sometime, and is a member of Alzheimer Scotland.

Lorraine Brown named here in ET decision as panel member assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/656def701104cf000dfa7499/Professor_R_Sheikholeslami_v_The_Univerty_of_Edinburgh_4102702__4107069.2012-Judgment.pdf

Out of about 100 panel member's I'd fairly hazard a guess that this is L Brown of the Peggie case.

Should go without saying, but be very careful, anyone googling - Lorraine Brown is not an uncommon name. For example the transwoman of that name in another country is probably not the same person ;-)

@MyThreeWords HR professionals often become lay members of ET.
A background in be8ng investigator/decision maker in grievance and discipline cases can be helpful.

As with this case and Jo Phoenix’s ET the most creditable witnesses were from HR. There have conversely been poor HR witnesses too.

I'm wary of us naming names because there is still a possibliity that a different L Brown is sitting on this case in 2025.

In the interests of being scrupulously fair I think the process around recusal in Stewart v Tayside was a good example of transparency and fairness. The original panel member recused themself and then the replacement disclosed their own potential CoI, after which all parties were content to proceed without further recusal.

If anyhing should be weighing on EJ Kemp's mind from that decision, it is perhaps that back then he very succinctly set out the requirements around making a timely detailed claim of harassment, including the guidance for claimants to raise concerns directly with the other employee if they feel able to do that,. In 2025 he seems to have come to the view that raising concerns directly may be viewed as proselytising, and perhaps should only be done with the utmost caution after first submitting to your alleged harasser's own wishes.

Apologies if this has been covered, I haven’t read all the posts on all the threads, but is the case where a barrister proposed that one or more members of the panel should recuse themselves? It was somewhere in the Tribunal Tweets notes and quite a bombshell at the time.
If it was this one, what happened?

That would be Sara Morrison v Belfast Film Festival, where one of the panel used the title Professor with apparently no justification.

Guaranteed no justification- all on record

Is there a pattern here? A Professor/Judge that isn’t, judicial utterances that never happened….what will it be next? Witnesses were swearing an oath on a cricket almanac instead of the Bible in Darlington?

That Times article is a bit disappointing - the "mistakes" all go in one direction, that makes them very unlikely to actually be mistakes and very likely to be deliberate.

If they were genuinely mistakes they'd equally impact positively or negatively at random on either the R or C. But no, it's all in favour of gender woo which is an ideology completely without empirical evidence. It's no mistake.

I am in no way a conspiracy theorist - but these cases are so compelling because they demand people admit the truth about something so contentious.

What other matter would have a judge near retirement commit career suicide in slow motion? What other matter would cause such out of character behaviour from the panel that a la Belfast they twitch, look upset when correct sex pronouns are used and so on.

Employment tribunals are never like this. Except when it comes down to baked in gender ideology.

@MetaCertificateAnnotationsJudgmentFINAL it's all so weird isn't it.

The world feels all upside down at the moment and every time I think things ought surely to be settling down by now and society becoming more sane, it just gets stranger. I feel a bit like I'm living in one of Sheri s Tepper's weirder stories, but at least in those the bad guys (and not a few women) get their comeuppance and the good people win. Goodness knows what's going to happen here.

This one?

https://christianconcern.com/ccpressreleases/kristie-higgs-appeal-to-proceed-judge-alone-after-unprecedented-double-recusal-for-perceived-bias-on-transgenderism-and-sex-education/

How everyone got so scared is the most baffling mystery. If everyone had to pretend eg that the banks were rock solid when they werent, that would be an understandable

pressure to lie, it.would be in their interests to do it, But with this, there’s no tangible benefit to these people, except that they would be cancelled if they didn’t subscribe. The reasons for the cancellations, the establishment conspiracy, I can’t fathom. The faithful are propping up their house of straw like mad, and the cost will be enormous. We will get there,Vegemite

Christian Concern also were involved in this case where the whole panel had to stand down and the tribunal rerun after a tribunal member was found guilty of misconduct by making anti-Christian and anti-conservative comments on social media. As they had heard six days of the case it was ruled that the other panel members would have been influenced by his views. That tribunal member had previously been involved in, and ruled against, Rev. Dr Bernard Randall in another transgender case - that one had an appeal hearing a few weeks ago.

https://christianconcern.com/news/tribunal-member-formally-rebuked-after-recusal-during-christian-teacher-case/

And then there was this one where the panel member was a past president of the TUC and oversaw its LBGTQ push….

https://christianconcern.com/news/another-recusal-as-tribunal-member-steps-down-over-real-possibility-of-bias/

It's like Friends, isn't it - 'The one where....'🙄