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

[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 #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

Fantastic article, thank you for the share token!

Terrific article as per usual from JT.

Really interesting interview. I'm glad Sandie still has the support of most of her friends (except Lindsey obviously 😒)

Thank you for the share. Davidson has gone even farther down in my estimation (if that were possible) for telling Sandie that she would stand as a character witness, and then absolutely turning on her. Nasty piece of self-serving work.

Brilliant article, thank you for sharing.

Excellent article. It really shows how poor the judgement was.

Also suggests the NHS lobby against Sandy was strong.

What a woman Sandy is to stand up against them all. True courage. It's also positive to highlight Isla Bumba is paid twice a nurses starting salary yet has no relevant law background. It highlights that DEI is often a delight for grifters.

The political analysis is very good but also concerning for England as Labour face similar reality at the next election, go into coalition with the Greens (&Libs) who are all supporters or self ID.

Also interesting that no Union Reps regret their lack of support for Sandie.

Thanks both for the link to that excellent article and share token.

This caught my eye:

They (Stonewall and other trans rights orgs) lobbied the Scottish government until it refused to fund any charity, even a rape crisis centre, unless it is trans inclusive. And For Women Scotland believes — but is not permitted to confirm by freedom of information request — that Scottish employment judges probably also received such training.

What do they mean, "not permitted"? Why (uhmm) ? And can that be changed?

She may have wanted to but then switched sides due to pressure at work and fear of being side-lined or pushed out of her job like Sandie.

Unions are run by men for men.
Women need their own union to have any chance at equality in the workforce.

The argument that has been used to refuse access is that any training materials and related information are held by or on behalf of the Lord President who is not a Scottish Public Authority and therefore falls outside the scope of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act. I am not clear if the Scottish Information Commissioner has made any rulings on this. However, if the SIC agrees that the information is not disclosable under FoI(Scotland), the only way to change this is for the Scottish government to change the law. I won't be holding my breath.

The article is indeed great. I have just read it in the magazine itself- we get the Times delivered - and it is buried away. It starts on page 26 but that's just blurb and a photo - the actual article doesn't start till page 34, after the middle pull-out recipe section which I, as a regular reader, recognise as a graveyard slot.

It is not featured on the front cover, which headlines an article with Chris Hemsworth (that's fair enough as they get to run a pic of him), but they trail three other articles including "looking cool at 60".

So, I think someone at The Times magazine has done their best to hide it.

It was a great article and some really good comments by Lucy Blackburn Hunter. Lovely photo of Sandie looking as if she is thriving despite all the pressure and I was so glad to read that her friends have rallied round her and that she still gets to holiday with the rest of the Benidorm posse.

That's such a good article. For those of us who followed the tribunal word-for-word, it feels - I think, at least - one of the most accurate representations of the whole sorry saga. So much has been distorted by cynically selective reporting by the BBC etc. This pretty much lays it all out in the open.

In that case thank goodness for the online site where this isn't possible.

They is a shame that they've buried it in the magazine. The article is currently quite prominent on the Times app, and all the comments seem to be broadly supportive of her

I still can't get over how a young graduate with ZERO experience in this area other than some student network when at Uni can land such a role! It's actually terrifying that we have so many amazing staff within the NHS, that a Band 7 role can be landed by someone with zero experience or even basic knowledge. Her admission during the case that she hadn't heard of parts of the Human Rights Act when she was 'Equalities and Human Rights Lead' should have been enough to take her down a competency route. Incompetent and unarmed with the basic knowledge to do her job.

And I'm also still absolutely astonished that Lindsey Nicoll is working as a nurse as one of the revelations during this was the breach of patient confidentiality about the patient whose details she shared and joked about on the WhatsApp group. She should really be taken down a (gross) misconduct route by both NHS Fife and the NMC for that as that is absolutely unforgivable to betray a patients confidence like that. There's also, of course, Dr Upton and his willingness to ignore single sex care instructions until a patient objects and only then will he stop. What a mess. Sordid, unprofessional and utterly shameful for everyone in NHS Fife who have let down their good staff but also demonstrating that even when a nurse admits in a court that she breached a patients' confidentiality, NOTHING has apparently been done about it. I'd suggest maybe Jamie Doyle and the cabal should've shown the same enthusiasm for suspending Nurse Nicoll as they'd shown for taking action against Sandie.

Agree. During the Tribunal itself, turning on the Scottish News at night would make you think you'd been watching something completely different from what the reporters had been saying had occurred!

Thanks @prh47bridge .

If it's not disclosable under FOI, should there not be another mechanism by which bodies are obliged to disclose potential unlawful influence? Whether from maliciousness or incompetence.

The first question is whether the refusal to provide information will be upheld by the Scottish Information Commissioner. If it is not, there is no need for an additional mechanism.

A number of individuals are classed as public authorities under the Freedom of Information Act (both the Scottish and rest of the UK versions). However, neither Act lists the judiciary, either individually or as a group, as public authorities. Whether they should is an interesting question and not one I feel able to answer.

For obvious reasons, there's a strong argument for the government and statutory bodies to be very cautious about what they feel they can order the Judiciary to do.

There was a case about this, in England I think. I vaguely remember the issue was they previously were an organisation covered by FOI then changed suggesting the intention was they should be covered and it wasn’t updated to reflect the change or some such.

Janice Turner spoke to Ayesha Hazarika on Times radio about the piece. Janice used correct sex pronouns for Upton. Ayesha then read out some comments afterwards - one person said it was “trans bashing” to which Ayesha said it was important to discuss these things and she didn’t believe in no debate. Another said why not have gender neutral toilets? And Ayesha spoke about how her experiences as a younger woman made her want female only toilets. I think she still is “middle ground” yada yada but I thought it was interesting to hear her pushback a bit.

Upton has apparently quit the NHS. Going to Australia where he will be allowed to encroach on female spaces again.

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/15925555/trans-doc-quits-nhs-sandi-peggie-case/?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=scottishsuntwitter&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1771108349