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

There are some very rude remarks about him in The Times BTL, don’t know if they come from direct knowledge. Many accuse him of laziness, and there is an emphatic use of ‘chancer’

Are you the post police? It's relevant to the comment I was replying to. No need for your comment. Thanks.

The Oxford English Dictionary uses -ize, as do many UK academic journals intended for international readership. It's an established variant.

I work in academic publishing. Two of my journals use -ize, one uses -ise, one uses US spelling (incl. "analyze", "color"), and two leave it up to the authors. I'm amazed that last sentence got through autocarrot intact!

All I'm saying is that -ize spelling shouldn't be taken as evidence of AI. Inconsistency suggests multiple authorship, but even that isn't a given, as some individual writers struggle with consistency.

I agree, This case was well covered by Scottish media at the time and I remember thinking there was something "off" about the whole thing.

With Christmas just round the corner, I wonder whether we should be asking for this helpful Legal tome (it's a bit cheaper secondhand on World of Books):
https://www.bloomsburyprofessional.com/uk/how-to-win-your-case-9781526516787/

(apologies if already posted, but it is making me smile)

Like @MyAmpleSheep I've been struggling to interpret WR1992 in light of EA2010: a lot of the discussion has been about 'ought' rather than 'is' and doesn't take into account that the legislation overall may contain defects or inconsistencies (due to bad drafting, or as an artefact of the litigation that's already happened).

It's obvious from Hansard and the explanatory notes that the legislature genuinely intended that men with GRCs should be treated as women for Schedule 3 purposes, except in the most limited of exceptional circumstances. The whole thrust of this legislation is abusive to women.

The SC decided to reverse this on the grounds that the PMOAALA underpinning Schedule 3 must be sex-based not legal sex-based, because what possible difference could a piece of paper make? (TRAs could legitimately point out that the true significance of the GRC is to prove that some gatekeeping has taken place, but, no matter, we have the decision and are bound by it.)

The way EA2010 is structured means that the single-sex exceptions provided by it are vitiated if single-sex status is not rigorously maintained (let one in, you must let all in). This does not apply to WR1992 because the operation of WR1992 does not require, and is not provided with, a SSE under EA2010.

In both decisions WR1992 has been interpreted as sex-based (correctly - its underlying objectives must surely bear some relation to the PMOAALA underpinning the Schedule 3 application to service providers' single-sex toilets and changing rooms) but with employer discretion to exceptionally allow in certain men.

Sutherland says this was not harassment of Kelly on protected belief grounds because she has adequate other provision.

Kemp finds the opposite. (But fails to find harassment on sex grounds or indirect sex-discrimination.)

Conclusion: to meet Sutherland's 'moral propriety' requirement, people with the PC of GC-belief must be provided with sufficient single-sex provision.

So do his previous judgements also use -ize?

No.

What is the "not even wrong" reference? Have not got my Wittgenstein for Dummies to hand....

Well, that would at least be correct. 😂

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

I've name changed for this for the obvious reason. Posting to chip in on the queries a few pages back on the role of the panel members. If this has already been covered sorry - can't keep up!

I'm a specialist member on a tribunal. Not the ET, but another tribunal in HMCTS that also has lay/specialist members sitting as a panel of three (two lay members and a judge). So the same set up.

The decision making is shared equally between the three panellists. We gather in private, discuss the evidence, issues, etc, and reach an agreed decision. That's usually but not always a consensus decision. Sometimes one panellist disagrees strongly in which case the majority view wins. This is always uncomfortable when you are the sole voice, but accepting that and moving on is part of the expectation. The judge chairs this but doesn't have an extra vote or anything - each panel member's views are equally important. And it genuinely feels that way; I've never had a judge try and 'pull rank'. Having said that, the judge is clearly expected to be the expert on the law, so if Big Sond had said "FWS says this..." I suspect the panelists may have accepted that.

The judge writes up the determination in full. Once they have a draft they send it on to the specialist members for input/review. It's fairly rare that I would suggest significant changes (the first draft is usually pretty good) but not uncommon to catch typos or minor errors such as an incorrect date. I confess I would not check all the quotes. I would assume that the judge (as the lawyer in the group) has them correct. Also, cynically, specialist members are not paid for reading/admin time, but only for sitting days. I don't know if the same is true in the ET, but it does dampen your enthusiasm for going above and beyond quote checking etc. I will probably be more diligent about this going forward as we are all equally responsible for that decision.

Incidentally, I have a case currently in that limbo period between hearing and handing down. Our judge is working on the decision. The other panel member has emailed saying, 'don't use AI'. This is getting traction and I for one am genuinely shocked that quotes have been made up/mangled this way. It is on the face of it very poor indeed.

It is used to describe an argument or explanation that is so far adrift from reality that it cannot be affirmed or denied. An example would be if I claimed to have an invisible third arm - it is impossible to test or falsify that statement. However, if I claimed I only have one arm, that is clearly wrong (although I'm not posting a photo to prove it!) but testable.

See also Russell's Teapot:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

I have a lot to say on Kelly. Moral propriety is a hallucination in relation to toilets.

And what I find EJ MS said was the toilets are rooms so they are single sexed- but the hand basins within the ladies toilets are mixes sex. She’s so wrong about this as mixed and single sexed spaces have to be built differently under the Workplace Regs, Building Regs and Construction Codes.

She fudged it worse than Sandy but in a more measured and less hallucination strewn way.

It's attributed to physicist Wolfgang Pauli. He described somebody's work as "not even wrong", meaning that it was so confused that he couldn't falsify it.

Based on the BSAS, you are right. And a man whose unwanted conduct is of a sexual nature is committing sexual harassment - this just wasn't established in Upton's case.

I do feel as though we need to shift this onto belief grounds, though. All the information about female disadvantage/male wrongdoing is valuable, of course. But I sometimes feel as if we are fighting a theocratic regime by trying to prove there is no god. When what we need is a secular regime. They can have their god if they like, but we shouldn't be forced to follow its rules.

In the workplace, we have the option to claim our protected belief protection in a private communication with the employer, and people should start doing it.

"Not even wrong" doesn't just mean "impossible to check" though. So to turn "I have an invisible third arm" into an example, try "I have a tattoo on my invisible third arm", or for Russell's teapot try "the teapot in orbit is blue with red flowers".

(I am a regular round here by the way but accidentally posted with the wrong nn, so stuck with it for this thread now!)

Thanks, that's really helpful.

But doesn't that put unfair pressure on women (and men) to have a philosophical understanding of sex and gender, when they just don't want to share a changing facility or toilet with somebody of the opposite sex?

Upton is a fully intact male, in a female changing room, watching or hoping to watch female nurses changing. That is in my opinion and I suspect the majority of people - sexual harassment. Any male who deliberately enters a female changing room, is doing it for nefarious reasons and those people trying to defend him, have lost the moral high ground.

"just don't want to share a changing facility or toilet with somebody of the opposite sex" is to have a philosophical view on the matter. That they are the opposite sex.

No. It simply requires women to believe that biological men shouldn't be in the women's facilities.

However, this comment highlights one of the problems with the judgement that I have mentioned before. The tribunal finds that SP telling Upton he shouldn't be in the women's changing room is proselytizing, on the basis that she was seeking to impose her view on Upton, whereas Upton asserting his right to be there is not, despite the fact that he is clearly seeking to impose his view on her. That position only works if Upton is right. In my view, this finding of fact is only sustainable if the ET is right that an employer can allow men into the women's changing rooms. If, as I believe, FWS means that an employer cannot do that, SP was not proselytizing. She was telling Upton the law.

Given Jane Russell's husband's ancestry, you would think she might have heard of this one.

But imagine a universe where everyone is TWAW? Then women would not feel sexually harassed by the mere presence of a TW.

Taking that to its logical conclusion, all facilities would be mixed sex because it's impossible to know somebody else's gender identity and if nobody cares about sex, why bother with the expense of separate facilities? You might as well have single sex supermarkets.

If you are going to go to the trouble of creating legislation that allows segregation, you have to ask why. Obviously the following comes from the services legislation, but one rationale is that a man or woman might object to the presence of somebody of the opposite sex. For this to be put into practice, it must be acknowledged that it is possible to make a judgement about the physical characteristics of a stranger and that sharing facilities with somebody of the opposite sex can have a negative impact on users.