Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton, following Employment Tribunal judgment - thread #60

[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
Thread 59: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5459115-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-following-employment-tribunal-judgment-thread-59 12 December 2025 to 17 December 2025

I saw a lawyer on twitter mention a previous case where the slip rule was tried to be used to make substantive amendments to a judgement but the appeal court only allowed the original judgement to be considered as the ‘corrections’ fell outwith the rules. I wonder if the same will be done here?

Me too.

Could it be pressure from higher-ups with a promise of "honourable discharge"? Or Trans Niece Syndrome? Or Malaga Airport? Or he's just high on his own Righteous farts?

The EAT could, in theory, say that the claims must succeed if the law is interpreted correctly. However, I am not convinced that they can say that in this case. The tribunal's findings of fact about Sandie's behaviour may mean that, even with a correct interpretation of the law, she would lose on some or all of the points that she lost at tribunal. And yes, if the EAT goes against Fife, they can appeal, including arguing that the case does need to go back for a rehearing if the EAT decides to reverse the tribunal's decisions.

Gosh - your post has made me think more on the potential ramifications.

At present SP’s “win” says that NHS Fife harassed her by allowing Upton into the female CR (after she complained).

Because this is a win at ET it has no binding effect on any other tribunals?

But because it was a “win” it cant be appealed?

Does this hold if part of the logic is considered flawed? The bit about having to complain?

What a travesty of justice.
And to think that if SP had no backer to help with costs she might never have even made it this far.
it’s terrifying to see our institutions spend public money to collude against women/51% of the population like this

I keep saying this, but it matters. In Scotland, the Lord Advocate is appointed by the First Minister. The Scotgov have jailed a journalist for supposed contempt of court, on bullshit trumped up charges.

I just dont think its really sunk in for most people that Scotland is corrupt, at the very highest levels. Or maybe not just HOW corrupt it is and how and why that matters. I suppose we are all a bit reluctant and scared to say so, and THAT is a large part of the problem.

We somehow see our corruption as a bit pretendy and not really mattering. We've got slowly used to it and accept it as the norm.

Also bear in mind the Supreme Court decided decisively and publically against the Scotgov's lawyers.

The whole shebang of genderpish is a tussle between courts, jurisdictions, and ultimately governments.

I think the finding that Dr U didn’t harass SP made no sense. I think Michael Foran said the same

If you dont hear from me again call the Free Speech Union and bring me a cake in the jail, please.

What about Health and Safety legislation?

It certainly override preferences. Many people have a preference not to wear a seatbelt but that is overridden.

I have never understood why health and safety didn’t come into this case more, other than the fact no ‘body’ collects the data.

When you do look at the data on toilets, less people are left dying (sometimes for days) and less women and children are assaulted, in single sex toilets with door gaps. They are also the toilets with the lowest pathogen load as they can be cleaned and ventilated easier.

Mixed sex spaces, which then require completely private toilet/changing cubicles off because of legislation and practically voyeurism (like Dr Upton suggested at one point I believe) are not as safe or healthy. Completely visually and acoustically private spaces in public areas aren’t as safe. Health and Safety rules override privacy as there should be a way to quickly access the occupant from the outside, precisely because of medical emergencies. This has been mentioned in toilet standards for decades.

Unisex changing rooms and public toilets don’t make sense from a Health and Safety perspective.

When can Health and Safety legislation override ET and EAT and the EHRC?

But because it was a “win” it cant be appealed?

It's a win for SP but a loss for NHS Fife so they could potentially appeal. But they don't have to, and there'd be good reasons for them not to.

The point I'm making is that an appeal at the EAT level doesn't automatically "convert" all issues at the ET level into binding case law.

It was unhelpful (and tedious) that the TRAs cried corruption and accused the SC judges of being bought because the FWS decision didn't go their way.

I think it is unhelpful - and undermines the GC position - for GC people to now start crying corruption and making similar accusations about Kemp because the Peggie decision hasn't gone their way.

How much did the Supreme Court justices discredit themselves by handing down a judgment that no one can understand how it came to be? How much harm to the justice system is their judgment risking?

Well. I guess we will just never know why courts in Scotland make such surprising decisions. And of course Nicola Sturgeon has been cleared of all accusations of corruption during Operation Branchform. And issues with the Salmond case were laid to rest with him.

Apples, oranges. The SC judgement didn’t contain made up stuff and misquotes and neither was it riddled with misinterpretations and logic fails. It was clear, solid and authoritative from beginning to end.

The travesty is the tribunal decision in this case. The rest is just the process required to put it right. But I agree that SP wouldn't be able to do this without a rich backer, which is not how it should be.

But it's not because the decision hasn't gone our way, it's because the decision is an incredibly shoddy piece of work that's had to be corrected twice. The only real explanations for that are bias or incompetence. Personally I'm generally a devotee of Hanlon's Razor - never ascribe to malice that which can be plausibly explained by incompetence - but I can understand why some people are leaning in the other direction.

Kemp's judgment reads as though he had a foregone conclusion fed into AI and the evidence mangled to support it.

To me that suggests corruption.

And to me the problem there is not what some anonymous fanny on Mumnset says (me), but that our institutions have got themselves into the position where the accusation that they are corrupt - at best utterly inept and/or biased ' is plausible and seems persuasive. That is undermining the public's faith in law.

Frankly, this court case, just like all the genderpish, is just a symptom of bigger issues.

It could just be a mix of bias and incompetence. Rather than corruption. But that bias and incompetence aligns, coincidentally, with the Scotgov's positions.

Might be interesting to read Dorothy Bain's SC arguments alongside Kemp's judgment.

At this point, believe me, I'm begging for Hanlon's Razor.

The Scottish people should hope for incompetence as the far preferable explanation for how our government, judiciary, health service, and sections of the media have all apparently gone stark raving mad.

Our own government insisted that men could turn into women if they paid £5 for a certificate.

We had to take our own government to court, several times, to assert that this was not, in fact, true.

So yes, forgive me for being a weeny bit cynical.

Yet the corruption of the judgment is clear for all to see. Falsities, use of AI, multiple inconsistencies and actual ignorance of the SC ruling.

MF said it was hard to see why if permitting or instructing something to happen was harassment then the act of doing of the same thing wasn't harassment.

With respect to MF it's not hard to think of some examples: an employee is known by their manager to be Jewish and to avoid pork products. The manager wants them to quit and instructs they be served nothing but ham sandwiches at the employer-provided lunch. The employee who serves them has no idea about the dietary restrictions. Is the server guilty of harassment as well as their employer? It could be held that the employer's conduct of instructing the serving only of ham reasonably created a hostile (etc.) environment, but that it was not reasonable, under the "other circumstances of the case" clause, for the server's conduct to have amounted to harassment.

Distinguishable from SP's situation? Sure. But a counterexample to Michael Foran's point, perhaps.

Or people feel powerless. Plus a proportion see corruption as necessary to achieve independence and is somehow Englands fault because of that and would magically resolve should independence happen rather than worsen.

The difference is that Upton knew that some people were upset by his presence in the female changing room & he didn't care. He knew that his actions were harassment..`