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

Do you mean "he is, and she is a complete fraud"?

Or to put it another way, it's all about power and in our present age, power comes from language. The ultimate power is that if you can control the words people feel they're permitted to use, you can control how they think. That's the present age. Let's see if that changes.

It's about confounding the implementation of the SCJ, buying 3 to 6 months, and hoping that the Labour government amends the law so that any Dr Upton figure can do as they please.

You might want world peace, they're all about the Dr Uptons.

I saw someone with legal expertise, say, somewhere that the length of the Peggie judgment is ridiculous. The SC judgment was, I think, around 100 pages?

It was 88.

They didn't use AI

I had googled to find that exact quote, but in the end didnt think Kemp was worthy of it.

You should have just got AI to create it for you.

When i studied law many moons ago we were taught the art of brevity.

so as not to bore lecturers and if on a path to lawyerdom, not to bore judges.

I do muse that he may have wanted to bore us all off, which did not really work for him.

i am with @ArabellaSaurus there is more than a hint of political pressure.

I would generally expect SC judgements to be shorter than those of lower courts as they do not need to set out the full timeline of events, nor do they have to summarise the evidence and say what they thought of the witnesses. But I agree that this judgement is excessively long.

By the way, returning to the earlier discussion on immunity, I am reminded of this judgement from last year which set out the history of immunity in the courts. I love the fact that paragraph 66 says, "I start 439 years ago"!

That link is to an error page.

I like judges who are crisp and concise. Of course you will always get the odd judge who likes to show off his (it's usually his) literary style and wit.

And then you get the odd one who reminds me of Mr Olson in Police Squad
‘You have to admire the simplicity of design.’ 🤣 #comedy #shorts

Apologies. Don't know what happened there. Try this link:

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/KB/2024/1963.html

Chapeau, MyAmpleSheep!

I wonder if it's a case of the more we string it out, the more chance there is that they'll give up? I've seen the same thing in complaint procedures across local and national government where timescales apply for you to submit but not for them to reply.

I was the disgraceful one who suggested to the then LGO that they could adopt the same technique as Tescos deli counter (they had them then.) You took a ticket with a number on it, and there was a gadget above the counter telling you what number was currently being dealt with. I still can't see why that wasn't an option.

I think the TRAs were hopeful that the judgment would solve their problems by giving them a fake law pronouncement that they could use to muddy the waters. Sandy has scuppered that by producing gobbledegook, and the realisation that he did this is so widespread that they seem to have lost their enthusiasm for his decision, after early statements that this is the law employers must apply. I think they underestimated how thoroughly the Supreme Court had buttoned the whole issue up, and overestimated the learned judge's ability to find a way out. Perhaps he did too. I have a feeling that he thought he could sort it all out for them and then found to his horror it was beyond him. No wonder he hated NC!

Oh what a tangled verdict we weave, when reality we do deceive.

I remember as a postgraduate student there was a theory doing the rounds that the more able the student the shorter the PhD thesis. The idea was if you had really good work, you wouldn't need a lot of it to impress an examiner. Not universal obviously but 300 page judgements make me think of it. Also that 300 pages would make a fairly chunky thesis. However it was produced there can't have been a lot of time for checking and editing.

It has just occurred to me on reading a mumsnetter's comment that they would not like to be cross examined by NC - the judgement is explained, NC's advocacy was so powerful it even managed to discombobulate judge Kemp's brain.

PSA: If you do an advanced search for BezMills and Fifer, you get the commentary throughout. Not in date order obviously (seriously, MN, how hard can it actually BE??) but still gems.

She knows this area of the law inside out and, I suspect, left him floundering. Years ago there was The Great Northern Conspiracy whereby English NW and NE barristers and judges had a tacit agreement to do next to no work and not show each other up. No one bothered with citations of authorities, a the quality of decision-making was truly appalling. But then some ungentlemanly smartarses turned up and started rocking the boat by looking up the actual law before the hearing. They were very much shunned, but they made a lot of money. I am wondering if we are looking at something similar.

The Great Northern Conspiracy

I thought that was Game Of Thrones?

They nicked the idea

So legal people are not in fact always doing their very sincere and clever best? I don't know how much more disillusionment is actually even possible.

I have a datapoint in support of this, as my thesis was very fat and not very good lol.