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

Could the EAT say we've looked at this and whatever decision we make will be appealed on both sides so we're sending it straight up a level?

I was watching miracle on 34th street the other day. Pretty sure Kemp has a dollar nite with "In Upton We Trust " written on.

Hands up! I've never written a thesis, but I'm the opposite of Blaise Pascal and always had to keep going back to see where I could add in a bit of superfluous waffle just to make the minimum word count for an essay. My lecturers used to say "You're very concise, but it's all there".

I think it took me longer to "up" the word count for my dissertation than it did to research and write the bones of the thing in the first place. It's a primary reason I changed my mind about a PhD. "It's got to be HOW many words"? I'd have had to stick War & Peace in the middle and hope nobody noticed (a bit like Sond's judgement).

No. The EAT must make a decision.

No. They have to do their job.

Looks lovely done as cross stitch!

There needs to be a decision to appeal from!

Also - the first instance judge has to make decisions about facts and credibility of witnesses. Those are not open to appeal, for the most part.

I imagine it must be very frustrating to the EAT to do something knowing you will have someone immediately turn around to say you're wrong.

Thank you all for your replies.

Have attempted to upload Private Eye column about Sandy Kemp

Sending him to work down a mine would give him space for plenty of thought!

We have plenty of disused mines in Fife. Just saying.

As a coal miner's daughter, I'm willing to get the shovel from the shed and shift a shitload of earth in order to shove the judge down a shaft.

[In all seriousness, Fife is riddled with abandoned mine shafts. I recall our neighbour's son climbing down one around 1970, in order to retrieve my pal's kite. The NCB never did have community safety as a priority.]

I'm sure that I could find a Frances access point. (They've built houses on top of Seafield in Kirkcaldy, but I could take a pick-axe and open up the Frances. It was a 'wet' pit, but wet seems appropriate, somehow.)

And should take his judgment with him.

Loving 'sillinamium' in that private eye spoof.

@WearyAuldWumman there's sure to be a big crowd of women willing to help that shaft, we'll get it done in no time.

I'm there.

Where's my shovel?

Lawyers are legal experts who earn a living defending their clients regardless of whether they believe in them/their case or not. Very few lawyers could afford to only work for clients they share the same convictions with.

I'm in, it would be nice to visit the mines down which generations of my family worked. One even lost half his finger down one. Sandy can look for it whilst he's down there.

There's https://www.draftable.com/compare if someone has both documents to look at side by side.

Private Eye really annoyed me with this jokey piece. They are absolute cowards when it comes to the whole debate.

What has happened with this tribunal result has undermined the courts and decreased trust in judges. Apparently that isn't important to PE.

They used to pride themselves on poking the establishment; now they are just another part of it.

Agree about PE, this is the sort of thing they should have been all over for years, but the best they can do is lampoon a judgement that’s pretty much beyond parody anyway. Their attitude is very much the casual misogyny of the male, educated upper middle classes, Women are OK if they’re “one of the boys”, can take a joke and don’t do those irritating female things like getting pregnant and being distracted by children. My brothers, nice men generally, are all like this.
They publish far more letters from the GI than the GC pov, which I think accurately reflects their readership, which I’m sure is predominantly male.
Having said that, MD (another man who has completely ignored the shocking medical aspect of child transition, as far as I’ve noticed) has in this issue got a section on the PB trial. Not sure where my copy is amid the festive untidiness, but I’ll take a photo when I find it.

I’ve just been catching up with the Eye, @borntobequiet, so here is the MD column. I agree with the criticisms, but I do think better late than never. Also, though it’s true that Kemp is easy to ridicule, it is very important that this happens so that attempts to represent the Peggie judgment as a serious legal statement are strangled at birth.

I don't like that P.Eye mock the reactions to the judgement, as well as the judgement. It feeds into the hate-fuelled GC feminist thing - we want him to be overruled, not to be terminated with extreme prejudice, or sent down sillinanium mines or anything like that.
Where does P.Eye's fun idea of hanging drawing and quartering come from?

I read it as "silliMANium".

Agree about the hamfisted attempt to sully both sides. It’s pretty much where PE has placed itself all along.

Where does P.Eye's fun idea of hanging drawing and quartering come from?

I think reliable schoolboy black humour associated with the “hanging judge” trope. It underlies a lot of what they find funny, PE fun depends a lot on the setting up of grotesques to be made merry with.

(I keep thinking I’ll stop reading it, but I bought my first copy in 1968 so it seems a shame not to carry on. My daughter buys my annual subscription.)

I think being the subject of a column like that is punishment enough for S Kemp. if he saw it before Christmas, that must have been quite the damper on the merriment, and he will definitely have known about it by Hogmanay.