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

Once you allow a man to legally enter a female only space, you are giving men the right to abuse women and girls. It effectively legalizes voyeurism for a sub-set of men - the ones with a woman fetish.

Any man who did what Upton did who did not use "trans" as a shield would have been turfed out of the changing room pronto and would probably also have lost his job (and rightly so imho).

Only the crazy adoption of a crazy ideology is stopping everyone from seeing what is staring them in the face.

I can't wait for this judgement to be appealed and consigned to the dustbin where it belongs.

@SqueakyDinosaur that's my recollection too, but to add insult to injury Kemp also took into account the fact that she did not whine and cry during the trial as evidence that she wasn't really hurt at all. And that she didn't really seem to love her husband since proper widows do cry, so serve her right (I'm only just slightly exaggerating).

Consistent with his judging that delicate feminine Dr U and Crying Kind Dr S were more reliable than tough, fierce Sandie.

Kemp appears to be routinely misogynist. His treatment of Gillian Phillip as well as Sandie Peggie illustrates this. If women don't behave the way he thinks they should, he penalises them. He allowed irrelevant evidence in the SP case which was essentially a character assassination of SP (and her family) and the same for GP.

If he behaved in such a blatantly biased way towards any other pc he would have been struck off years ago.

I hope there will be further scrutiny of misogynistic bias in previous judgements.

If a judge is appointed to enforce a law that he fundamentally cannot grasp because of his own deep seated prejudices, then what happens?

A.large part of employment law is surely going to consist of dealing with the EA?

I agree he’s a misogynist, whatever the rights and wrongs of individual cases.

From what I've read about Gillian Phillip's case, Kemp's judgement on her employment status doesn't seem incorrect but his comments about her marriage and her grief seem both irrelevant and cruel.

Same as with Peggie. He may have come to.whatever ill judged legal conclusions due to incompetence or stupidity or something else, but the personal judgements are malice, apparently motivated by misogyny.

And this makes him unfit to be a judge.

The SP judgement fails every basic test of professional competence (made up quotes, inaccuracies, inability to comprehend very clear supreme court judgements, allowing witch hunt / character assassination irrelevant evidence on one side only and failing to allow scrutiny of relevant evidence (e.g analysis of Upton's phone) lack of ability to know basic accepted obviously real facts). His bias is clear. How he's still employed I really don't know.

I really don't have any faith in the courts as a result.

Also indecent exposure.

I'm not referring specifically to this case, but it's just a fact that it's not illegal to strip off in a place where you are allowed to be naked.

This was illustrated perfectly by the judgement in the Wii Spa case. The man had the legal right to be there, so regardless of his prior history, the court could not find that he had done anything wrong.

Its possible he's performed a public service by revealing the gravity of the issues very publically.

I am glad you have picked this up. With the myriad of mixed sex toilet provision there’s a problem with the Sexual Offences Act in that the sections about sexual activity in a toilet and voyeurism really need to be refined again. If even the Home Office men can’t be trusted to close the toilet door, it causes problems for both sexes about what is ‘reasonable’.

The Home Office women were distressed and avoided using the toilets in 2018. This has been going on for years.

With a 42 day time limit for filing an appeal then the Notice of Appeal will be filed by 19 January (assuming Kemp's corrections haven't changed the timing and unless there's an extension of time granted, which would be unusual).

As well as judgments (see below), any member of the public (including journalists) is entitled to inspect or request a copy of any notice of appeal, respondent’s answer, or order. They are also entitled to make an application to inspect or receive a copy of any other document. Please refer to paragraphs 7.3 and 7.4 of the EAT Practice Direction 2013.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-to-staff-on-supporting-media-access-to-courts-and-tribunals/jurisdictional-guidance-to-support-media-access-to-courts-and-tribunals-tribunals-guide-accessible-version#employment-appeal-tribunal

It isn't clear whether this would be a bare Notice of Appeal without accompanying parts, particularly the Grounds of Appeal.

It does seem that sexual offences and safeguarding children always take second place to the demands of men to be in places where women and girls are undressed.
Even in schools safeguarding girls has been deprioritised to allow teenage boys to be in changing rooms, showers and even dormitories / shared sleeping accommodation alongside girls.
The fact that this incoherent approach has been allowed for so long to the detriment of girls speaks to the power of the predators who write these guidelines / enforce these toxic beliefs.
If that sounds hyperbolic, it's meant to be. Those who insist on mixed sex changing etc are adopting predatory values and decriminalising well established sex crimes against girls and women. Time to hold them accountable and label clearly what they're promoting.

With regards to safeguarding and toilet design that rings true and I agree.

Isn't there also a problem with girls not wanting to use toilets at school so they "hold on" all day which is detrimental to bladder/bowel function.
When visiting toilets on campsites I like it when the radio or music is playing, not sure whether that's safer or not. Psychologically I feel more comfortable.

Isn't there also a problem with girls not wanting to use toilets at school so they "hold on" all day which is detrimental to bladder/bowel function.

Yes, there is.

100%

He was completely biased in his treatment of Peggie and Upton and appears to have based his decisions on class and sex rather than the objective evidence.

He treated the male boundary violator as if he were the victim and treated the female victim of voyeurism as if she were the perpetrator.

Outrageous at every level.

Imagine if he were the judge in a rape case - would he let the rapist off because the victim used terms that offended his delicate disposition while he was busy assaulting her?

Scotsman
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/snp-ministers-to-be-quizzed-on-ai-use-in-sandie-peggie-v-nhs-fife-ruling-5465084
Murdo Fraser MSP to ask about AI use by judges this afternoon

Michael Foran has published a Substack on Monday:

TLDR

The Tribunal presumes that Upton could bring a successful claim of harassment if denied access to female changing rooms. But this is not supported by any reasoning in the judgement and would require analysis of the tests in the Equality Act and the 1992 regulations.

It is difficult to reconcile comments in the Supreme Court with the presumption that Upton would have a successful claim. Yet it is that presumption which the Tribunal relied on to ground its entire approach to the case.

There is more detail on how a UK court could conclude that a claimant using EHCR rights had a positive right (eg to access single sex spaces) and how unlikely that is.

Personally I think the discussion about AI use rather misses the more obvious failure at his job and illegal personal misogynistic bias Kemp displays.

I think it's a way to try and avoid accountability.

Oh dear, what a silly man I am (though v v important, naturally) I used a technology wrongly!

Nothing about the character assassination allowed of Peggie, totally irrelevant to the case. Nothing about the basic failures of legal understanding which display a lack of competence that should render him unfit to do his job.

Maybe he used AI but he's also misogynistic (which I said during the case not just after the judgement - wall of sad etc - very unequal standards applied to Upton and Peggie) and absolute rubbish at his job. The AI use is frankly the least worrying thing. At the very least he should be good enough at his job to fucking check any quotes AI spews out. We're better fact checkers on here, doing it for free and in our own time!

But could that be used to bypass/accelerate normal appeal processes? Otherwise everyone has to sit and painfully unpick all the nonsense arguments, as Foran has started to do

I agree. The AI use is not in itself the problem. I assume that AI is now widely used by lawyers. The problem is that he doesn't seem to have understood what he was doing. In previous eras he could have looked it all up on Wikipedia or just quoted the wrong statute or made it up himself.

I agree. Blaming AI is a bit like blaming the keyboard. It is just a tool. The words, however generated, are the responsibility of Kemp and the other panel members.

Whether he used AI or not, the flaws in the judgement are such that rather than accelerate appeal, the tribunal needs to be heard again.

And Kemp AND the other panel members sacked.

Agree and I find it very undermining in my belief in the rule of law as a cornerstone of democracy that this already hasn't happened.