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Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton, following Employment Tribunal judgment - thread #61

882 replies

nauticant · 08/01/2026 19:40

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 #60 can be found in this thread: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379717-sandie-peggie-list-of-threads-covering-employment-tribunal-and-afterwards

Thread 60: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5461133-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-following-employment-tribunal-judgment-thread-60 16 December 2025 to 8 January 2026

OP posts:
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42
Kucinghitam · 21/01/2026 13:08

BezMills · 21/01/2026 12:52

Aye I'd say for sure he's tellt her! Whether the Judge will "tak a telling" remains to be seen!

I'm not overly optimistic but the ballistic missive from enthusiastic amateur Wings (no disrespect intended to the guy at all) could be useful in clarifying matters for professional journalists to do some actual work on this.

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It's quite astounding* how many so-called journalists, who would no doubt self-identify as brave warriors for truth and justice, are completely uninterested in what appears to be a scandalous undermining of judicial standards.

*not astounding

MeltedSunshine · 21/01/2026 13:17

Wackdemmoles · 21/01/2026 12:40

Will she will farm out the writing of her response letter to
a) Chat GTP
b) India Willoughby
c) NHS Fife's resident squirrels?
I plump for c) because they have time on their hands before they draft the Trust's defence to the appeal and they have a great sense of humour

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I predict the John Swinney approach - “I can’t comment on live legal proceedings even though I instigated them and am directing the solicitors at your expense“

MeltedSunshine · 21/01/2026 13:18

Either that or Walker will issue a ‘corrected’ version of the letter with a paragraph deleted…

Ancestress · 21/01/2026 13:21

Q: Dear President of the Employment Tribunal, who is Judge Kemp's unnamed judicial colleague?

A: You don't know them. They go to a different school tribunal room.

BezMills · 21/01/2026 14:53

Ancestress · 21/01/2026 13:21

Q: Dear President of the Employment Tribunal, who is Judge Kemp's unnamed judicial colleague?

A: You don't know them. They go to a different school tribunal room.

Is the "judicial colleague" in the room with us now?

Igneococcus · 21/01/2026 15:03

Another proposes a footnote. A third insists on a footnote to the footnote, “for robustness.”

Those squirrels would enjoy Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Half the book consists of footnotes.

ProtectedlyInsufferable · 21/01/2026 15:19

Michael Foran has been speaking to the BBC and seems happy with the piece, which is here:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7v0l25mr2ro

RedToothBrush · 21/01/2026 15:22

ProtectedlyInsufferable · 21/01/2026 15:19

Michael Foran has been speaking to the BBC and seems happy with the piece, which is here:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7v0l25mr2ro

I felt that piece managed to say the sum total of nothing in the end.

lcakethereforeIam · 21/01/2026 16:41

I swear the picture of Rose that the BBC choses to use gets more fuzzy and nebulous each time it's wheeled out.

QuetzalTerfLus · 21/01/2026 16:52

lcakethereforeIam · 21/01/2026 16:41

I swear the picture of Rose that the BBC choses to use gets more fuzzy and nebulous each time it's wheeled out.

Nebulous non-supportive operating department practitioner?

doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, admittedly

MistyGreenAndBlue · 21/01/2026 16:58

lcakethereforeIam · 21/01/2026 16:41

I swear the picture of Rose that the BBC choses to use gets more fuzzy and nebulous each time it's wheeled out.

I know right. At this rate by next week it'll be nothing but a blob of pixilated squares.

lcakethereforeIam · 21/01/2026 17:07

He'll look like a minecraft character.

Totallygripped · 21/01/2026 17:47

RedToothBrush · 21/01/2026 15:22

I felt that piece managed to say the sum total of nothing in the end.

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I think it's useful to highlight the issue.
On another point, did SP actually issue proceedings against Searle et al? And if so will those proceedings be stayed pending the appeal?

inkymoose · 21/01/2026 18:16

Igneococcus · 21/01/2026 15:03

Another proposes a footnote. A third insists on a footnote to the footnote, “for robustness.”

Those squirrels would enjoy Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Half the book consists of footnotes.

I don't think they would. It was the gerbils who were writing the footnotes.

ArabellaSaurus · 21/01/2026 19:31

lcakethereforeIam · 21/01/2026 17:07

He'll look like a minecraft character.

Its the square jaw.

ArabellaSaurus · 21/01/2026 19:32

Igneococcus · 21/01/2026 15:03

Another proposes a footnote. A third insists on a footnote to the footnote, “for robustness.”

Those squirrels would enjoy Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Half the book consists of footnotes.

Drove me up the wall. See also 'House of leaves'. Too clever by half.

MartySupremeisascream · 21/01/2026 19:35

HildegardP · 21/01/2026 03:36

@MartySupremeisascream Your original point was fair but the departure into conflating certain universities with judicial incompetence was a reach at best.
Kemp went to Aberdeen, BTW.

I never conflated judicial incompetence with certain universities - that's an interpretation of your own making.

I was talking about classism.

ArabellaSaurus · 21/01/2026 19:44

Wackdemmoles · 21/01/2026 12:08

Meanwhile, Wings over Scotland's Stuart Campbell has written to ET President Susan Walker
Yelling at the tide
Posted on January 21, 2026 by Rev. Stuart Campbell
We figured someone had to at least try.

So in the light of this, we’ve sent a letter.
———————————————————————-
TO: Judge Susan Walker, President, Employment Tribunal (Scotland)
Dear Madam President,
I read with considerable dismay and alarm your response to a recent complaint from a Mr Ewan Kennedy regarding the conduct of Employment Judge Alexander Kemp in the case of Peggie vs Fife Health Board and Dr. B Upton.
Like Mr Kennedy, my concern is not with the judgment itself, which I am aware is subject to appeal, but with the specific content of the judgment, and in particular the much-publicised presence of a number of entirely fictional quotations from previous cases, which Judge Kemp used to form key aspects of his decision.
The explanation issued by your office in response to Mr Kennedy’s complaint is deeply troubling. It states:
“I am satisfied that Judge Kemp did not use generative AI in drafting the judgment. It is clear from my enquiries that the source of the erroneous quotes from Forstater and Ashers was an exchange of correspondence between Judge Kemp and a judicial colleague.”
His Majesty’s Courts And Tribunal Service can surely not consider “a big boy did it and ran away” to be an adequate response to such a grave matter. While not a legal expert, as far as I am aware it is unprecedented – I am unable to find a single example in recorded history of a judgment containing multiple entirely fabricated citations – and questions therefore arise which urgently require clarification.
(1) Why was Judge Kemp consulting a colleague (who had, presumably, not heard the evidence in the case) at all? What expertise could they bring to bear that he, having read and heard all of the evidence, could not?
(2) Who was this colleague? If the judgment has been significantly affected by someone other than the person whose name it is issued in, how can accountability and transparency and public trust in the judicial system be served by that person remaining anonymous? How are people to discern whether that person may have a conflict of interest, particularly given the ongoing political issues and sensitivities around this case and this topic more generally?
(3) How much of the judgment was the unnamed colleague, not Judge Kemp, actually responsible for or exercising influence over? If they fed him false quotations, what else did they tell him?
(4) Most importantly, how did this anonymous colleague come to produce these fabricated citations? Because clearly it is no more explicable or acceptable for he or she to have invented them than for Judge Kemp to have done so. If you are satisfied that Judge Kemp did not derive them from generative AI, are you equally satisfied that the anonymous colleague did not? If they did not, where did they come from?
It surely cannot be satisfactory for the public to be dismissively told that these highly significant and consequential quotations simply materialised from thin air.
Either (i) they come from cases other than those they were attributed to (which seems unlikely, as the quotes themselves were replaced in the subsequent versions of the judgment, rather than the citations being corrected), or (ii) they were produced by AI, or (iii) they came from an unknown third party and were not checked by Judge Kemp, or (iv) either Judge Kemp or the anonymous colleague invented them themselves.
Since any of the latter three explanations, and in particular (iv), would be extremely serious, it cannot be just left hanging as a possibility, for it would reasonably cast the integrity of Judge Kemp at a minimum into doubt, and even the entire judicial system, should it be seen or believed to be the case that the matter was being whitewashed.
It is also not clear from the response on which grounds the complaint was rejected. Section 6.1 of the complaints policy lays out the following possibilities:

Grounds (a) to (e) and grounds (g) to (l) seem obviously not to apply, leaving only ground (f), which would be consistent with this passage from the response:
“I do not consider that it supports a proposition that making a mistake in a judicial decision, whether an error of law or an error of the kind that has been identified in this judgment, can be – without more – deemed judicial misconduct”.
But the Guide to Judicial Conduct says as follows:
There are three basic principles guiding judicial conduct:
• Judicial independence
• Impartiality
• Integrity
To have used entirely fictitious citations, provided by an unnamed party and not checked by the tribunal judge, in coming to a judgment which was likely to prove controversial no matter what the decision, and in the knowledge that that decision was likely to be subject to intense scrutiny, must surely place any judge’s integrity and impartiality in question, absent a satisfactory explanation of how those fictitious citations came about. “It was a regrettable error” is at once a statement of the obvious, and manifestly inadequate.
As such, then, I respectfully request that your office either:
– provides greater clarity on who Judge Kemp corresponded with, what was said in this correspondence, and what the ultimate source of the fabricated quotations was,
or
– reconsiders its decision as to whether the fabrications amount to judicial misconduct.
I look forward to your response in the fervent hope that it will go some way to restoring public confidence over these events.

Good letter.

Unfortunately its abundantly clear that in Scotland today not a single fucker will take responsibility for upholding their public duties. And nobody even cares. They'll still vote for More Of The Same Pish, Please, We're Scottish.

SwirlyGates · 21/01/2026 20:11

Igneococcus · 21/01/2026 15:03

Another proposes a footnote. A third insists on a footnote to the footnote, “for robustness.”

Those squirrels would enjoy Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Half the book consists of footnotes.

OMG I couldn't stand that book! It might have been ok at a third of the length, with no bloody footnotes. And then, after about 1000 pages, no real ending. That's weeks of my life I'll never get back.

Igneococcus · 22/01/2026 06:36

@SwirlyGates @ArabellaSaurus
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is one of my favourite books ever. I know it's very much a marmite book but I love it. I only skim-read the bigger footnotes and I didn't love it until almost the end where everything comes together. I like that it doesn't have a happy ending (or happy endings) as such. The otherwise very good TV series completely wrecked the ending. It's a book for stormy autumns nights. The short story (The Ladies Grace Adieu) that came before (no footnotes) has three fabulous female friends as the central characters. I'm often trying to channel Miss Tobias when faced with some smarmy man.

Shedmistress · 22/01/2026 06:41

SwirlyGates · 21/01/2026 20:11

OMG I couldn't stand that book! It might have been ok at a third of the length, with no bloody footnotes. And then, after about 1000 pages, no real ending. That's weeks of my life I'll never get back.

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I absolutely loved that book.

Footnotes, if the squirrels want them, should try Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I needed post it notes to keep up.

womendeserveequalhumanrights · 22/01/2026 07:00

I think what's stark also in this case is comparing the treatment given to nurses such as Peggie and Melle - who were both suspended for periods of time for doing nothing wrong - and Kemp who has not been suspended even though he's clearly at best extremely incompetent at his job and I think the evidence suggests biased and simply making stuff up and subverting the law to his point of view.

How well would it go for any nurse making stuff up in her job?

Apparently the elite can never be fired and working nurses can be fired on the whim of the elites for doing nothing wrong.

And everyone wonders why the NHS is failing.

ArabellaSaurus · 22/01/2026 08:11

womendeserveequalhumanrights · 22/01/2026 07:00

I think what's stark also in this case is comparing the treatment given to nurses such as Peggie and Melle - who were both suspended for periods of time for doing nothing wrong - and Kemp who has not been suspended even though he's clearly at best extremely incompetent at his job and I think the evidence suggests biased and simply making stuff up and subverting the law to his point of view.

How well would it go for any nurse making stuff up in her job?

Apparently the elite can never be fired and working nurses can be fired on the whim of the elites for doing nothing wrong.

And everyone wonders why the NHS is failing.

Edited

Exactly. The class aspects are screaming here. The professional classes - doctors, judges, etc - are protected.

The class also intersects with sex.

Male judge, male.doctor, male special identity person.

Female nurses, working class, monstered, labelled, and written off as unworthy of having rights.

The NHS were very firm and clear that the paedophile Jennifer Melle treated must have his rights respected. Rose must have his rights respected. Dr Upton must have his rights respected.

But a nurse? Her rights are insignificant. Whether she's dealing with heavy periods, trauma history from sexual abuse, or racist abuse from a convicted criminal and sex offender, any objection on her part reveals she is a bigot and must be condemned and attacked and smeared and disciplined and probably sacked.

Service humans. Must obey men's diktats. Its a wonder we're not all out on the streets smashing things up.

Easytoconfuse · 22/01/2026 08:16

ArabellaSaurus · 22/01/2026 08:11

Exactly. The class aspects are screaming here. The professional classes - doctors, judges, etc - are protected.

The class also intersects with sex.

Male judge, male.doctor, male special identity person.

Female nurses, working class, monstered, labelled, and written off as unworthy of having rights.

The NHS were very firm and clear that the paedophile Jennifer Melle treated must have his rights respected. Rose must have his rights respected. Dr Upton must have his rights respected.

But a nurse? Her rights are insignificant. Whether she's dealing with heavy periods, trauma history from sexual abuse, or racist abuse from a convicted criminal and sex offender, any objection on her part reveals she is a bigot and must be condemned and attacked and smeared and disciplined and probably sacked.

Service humans. Must obey men's diktats. Its a wonder we're not all out on the streets smashing things up.

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Isn't that what the judge in Darlington highlighted? That the nurses were upset, but Rose might complain so Rose must be treated with kid gloves. I wonder if they've got the self awareness to think 'and how did that work out for us?' Probably not, if their non apology is anything to judge by.

ArabellaSaurus · 22/01/2026 08:17

The thing is that MOST women have a history that includes sex abuse/assault at the hands of a man. Its not like its fucking rare. Most women have experienced the mess and difficulties of periods at some point. These aren't some unusual outliers, these are standard, everyday, normal female experiences.

Kemp with his minor note of concession on how a rape survivor may respond to a bloke in the space with her where she gets undressed. Like its a rare anomaly. He doesnt have a fucking clue.