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

The problem is that he doesn't seem to have understood what he was doing.

That appears to fit the facts but I think, whatever Kemp was up to, he was strongly motivated to create a messy judgment that would be used by those wanting to undermine the correct application of the Supreme Court judgment. He has succeeded in doing that.

Assuming that this is correct, then we have a real problem in the judiciary. But not one that should surprise long-term followers of this issue. We saw it years back with the Equal Treatment Bench Book, the way that LGBTQ+ training for judges was hidden and never revealed, the first Forstater judgment in 2019, and the fact that for a long time it wasn't possible to see correct application of the law in this area at first instance.

I would agree to there being a real problem in the judiciary. It is amazing to me that there seems no urgency at all to correct the impression from this that it's all as corrupt as anything and there is no real rule of law to rely on anymore.

It's a fundamental undermining of democracy.

No suspension even. There is no way he can reasonably hear a case now - no lawyer worth their salt would allow it. So why the silence?

This is Scotland. You only get sacked if you go against the prevailing political orthodoxy. If you're on the Right Side of History, you can do whatever you like and it'll be excused.

Very disturbing.

Yes. We should be better.

Perfect example : Ash Regan suspended for 2 days, Maggie Chapman literally voted to let herself off. It's rigged. Everyone knows it, and nobody cares.

Those who do care are "bigots", shouted down or ignored.

https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/ash-regan-suspended-from-holyrood-prostitution-bill-5465570

I think he failed partly, in that the decision so instantly was exposed and discredited that it lacks any authority whatever. So he failed to clarify, but people seeme to have given up trying to use it as an authority for anything.

Don’t mean to be a pedant but the erection manual only runs to 37 pages. Much shorter path to erection of the BIGLY screen doesn’t help it get erected frequently. Sad rare lonely screen erections.

I don't think he deliberately made a messy judgment.

I think he was trying to decide it solely on an employment law basis.and didn't really want to get into the trans issue. I also think he saw DU as a woman because he doesn't want effeminate men like DU in his own single sex spaces. Remember DU was in full woman face at the tribunal but would just be a long-haired man with a high voice in scrubs without makeup in the changing room.

Kemp didn't want to do anything other than punish SP for being female and working class. I imagine if it gets to a remedy hearing, he won't award her much compensation.

The trouble is by using AI in his judgment he has absolutely got himself into a mess on the trans issue and undermined his credibility as a result.

Agreed. Virtually all his mistakes were to Sandie Peggie's disadvantage. If Judge Kemp were just grossly incompetent we'd expect a much more even split.

Kemp's long, woolly and 'creative' judgement reads very much as if AI was tasked to justify giving NHS Fife the gentlest of wrist taps. And to discredit and embarrass Sandie Peggie. So he started with his chosen end in mind, rather than systematically going through the evidence and seeing where it took him.

He was so stupid. A cleverer judge would have thrown the book at NHS Fife, and eviscerated the behaviour of its HR/EDI staff and of Upton's supervisor. He could've used the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Equality Act 2010 as his main weapon. This sets out how the law is and always was, since the Equality Act was introduced in 2010. So Upton should never have been in the Women's Changing Room.

As soon as Upton mentioned to his supervisor what he was doing, or as soon as someone/anyone complained/noticed, he should have been told No, Stop. NHS Fife was guilty many times over, and their incompetence was the primary cause of the bullying and harassment of Sandie Peggie.

We'd have been disappointed that Upton was 'cleared' by Kemp's judgement. But very pleased by his clear statement that the Supreme Court ruling does mean that Women's Spaces in the workplace must exclude all transwomen. The TRAs would cling onto the 'exoneration' of Upton, and place the blame on those pesky FWS and Mumsnet terves. What else could poor Kemp do?

But Kemp is not King Solomon. And he seemed wedded to the desire to be on the right side of history. And so he joined so many - Sturgeon! Wadhwa! Stonewall! Mermaids! et al who find they're actually in the wrong.

I'm amazed Kemp's retirement has not yet been announced. He has no credibility left.

Whatever else he may be, Kemp is clearly not very bright. I remember all the smug utterances of ‘That’s not how we do it in Scotland’, now to be very much relished. (No offence, Scotland)

Sounds like an SNP supporter.

I think Kemp definitely understood 'TERFS = bad', but he doesn't seem to have come up with a particularly satisfactory solution for trans people either, if staff should be consulted on whether they are happy to share facilities with Upton. This suggests a continuous process of assessment and the ever present possibility that staff views might change, and certainly no attempt to maintain privacy.

It's quite difficult to make up the law as you go along.

He's clearly stupid but also a misogynist.

I think Maya pointed out in an interview that if it was just incompetence we'd expect a more even split as to who is disadvantaged by his incompetence. When "mistakes" all go one way it reveals the truth of his intentions. However doing it in such a blatant way was incredibly stupid! I suppose we should be thankful for his stupidity really!

This is the most obvious flaw in the judgment, from the point of view of both GI and GC sides. It's clearly unsupportable to have a cadre of staff whose access to any given changing room is dictated by some kind of majority vote amongst staff, or some kind of consensus that will obviously vary month to month, organization to organization (or site to site, or floor to floor, or even day to day, depending who happens to be working where).

This being said, Kemp if TRA had little other choice. Scenario 1 (the correct one): males out of F toilets, he didn't want. Scenario 3: males absolutely in female toilets upon their sole request, and fuck females, even he could see it would not hold against appeal (not to mention public opinion). Scenario 2: it's complicated must have seemed the least difficult way out.

(Not defending him, obviously)

Another chance for me to produce yet again my Edmund Burke quote:

It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.

Judge Kemp is the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to using that quote!
Except in his case, he seems to be happy to delegate law-making to the current opinions of a random group of staff members.

https://www.scottishparliament.tv/meeting/meeting-of-the-parliament-january-7-2026?clip_start=14:48:19&clip_end=14:50:43

That should be the Parliamentary qu and snippy, bad tempered gov response, which is that it's nothing to do with them, thanks, the judiciary should do whatever it likes.

Thanks for the link but by Goddess that was a frustrating watch.

Don't just blether on about judicial impartiality when IN THIS CASE the Judge has clearly been ANYTHING but impartial. All the mistakes go one way, it's incompetent AND very, very biased. He's a clear misogynist. What's the consequence of such an utter failure of a judge in this case, including failure of impartiality?

Pathetic.

Scottish advocate Jonathan Brown on Foran's Substack commentary on Kemp's judgment:
'This is characteristically excellent. The central flaw in the judgment is the familiar misconception, propagated by activists for years, that the PC of GR confers a presumptive right to be treated as the opposite sex. As Michael convincingly demonstrates, it doesn’t.

But then he completely lost the plot and started making stuff up.

That's the unfathomable part and I can still only think some kind of breakdown.

Oh, I love @ broonjunior on X! Another sensible bloke.