Sandie Peggie . The Nurse who said No.

Her employment tribunal resumes this week...

The Sandie Peggie tribunal resumes this week. Here is a column I wrote in February about why it matters. Since then we have had the Supreme Court ruling and the NHS have been forced to reveal they have so far spent £220,000 on this case. I hope to be writing more about it here.

An employment tribunal in Fife will not be uppermost in many people’s minds but the case involving the treatment of a nurse called Sandie Peggie has become totemic.

It represents the apotheosis of the gender madness that has overtaken our institutions, particularly in Scotland.

Do you remember the case of the Darlington nurses last year who did not want to share a changing room with a transwoman? They felt “unsafe”. That particular transwoman “Rose” was not taking any hormones and was in fact trying to get his girlfriend pregnant. This is where terminology gets difficult. “Rose” is simply a man identifying as female. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, met the nurses and said clearly that they needed single-sex spaces. The great majority of us understand that need and – especially for nurses in the workplace – it seems to be a basic requirement.

Yet to say this in Scotland is to risk losing your job. Sandie Peggie has been a nurse for 30 years in Kirkcaldy. Her record is unblemished. She is the sort of person our NHS absolutely relies on; a woman with decades of experience, who gets on uncomplainingly with a vital job.

Until she did dare complain when she was forced to share a changing room with Dr Beth Upton. This person was a man until 2022 but now they are a “transwoman” and therefore all around are expected to accept this even though Upton remains biologically male. I am aware, as I write this, that the Scottish Express has been reported to the police for describing Dr Upton as a man. This is the ludicrous situation we find ourselves in. Well, bring it on.

Peggie had to change when experiencing menstrual flooding and felt uneasy about getting undressed in front of Upton. She expressed how uncomfortable it made her, also revealing a sexual assault in her past. Upton may declare himself a woman but dealing with a heavy period is something he will never experience is it?

This whole issue of single-sex spaces rests on the fact that women need privacy and safety away from men who, whatever they feel themselves to be, just do not experience the tribulations of womanhood. This is a simple fact that cannot be dismissed by the biology-deniers – including Upton, who, as a health professional should damn well know better.

Peggie then found that she was suspended in January 2024 after Upton made allegations of bullying and harassment. She returned to work a few months later “under investigation” so she lodged a complaint of “Sexual harassment or harassment related to a protected belief under Section 26 of the Equality Act 2010” regarding three incidents when they shared a changing room: indirect harassment, victimisation and whistleblowing.

This has resulted in an employment tribunal. All of this costs thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money – NHS Fife will not reveal the figures by the way – but money which would surely be better off spent on I don’t know? Treating patients?

At the tribunal we learnt some astonishing things. One could see this was a case about class, medical hierarchies and straightforward male entitlement. Peggie has stood up to Upton who has apparently “never been spoken to like this before”. Really doctor? What a sheltered life you must have enjoyed.

Even more astonishing was that we had to listen to Upton, a qualified doctor, saying: “I am biologically female” and that “biological sex is a nebulous term and doesn’t really mean anything …nobody can actually define biological sex”.

Every woman I know was WhatsApp-ing each other. “Just don’t get ill in Fife!”

Such gender woo is bad enough, but Upton has the support of a load of muddled managers. Even worse, there were suddenly accusations that Peggie had compromised patient safety by refusing to work alongside him. This is a serious allegation to make against someone who has nursed for 30 years.

Now we find that, in advance of the tribunal result in July, Peggie has to attend a conduct hearing on Friday which may lead to her dismissal. Who is the bully here? This is prejudging the outcome of the tribunal and an attempt to hide NHS Fife’s own screw-ups. They clearly want to get her out of the way. Lawyers are rubbing their hands at how much this is all going to cost but why is this even happening?

It is the result of Scotland’s uptake – steered by former first minister Nicola Sturgeon – of extreme gender ideology, and Scots politicians look like cowardly fools for standing by and letting this nurse be treated like this.

You can, of course, want trans people to be given respect, but if your policies result in rapists in women’s prisons and nurses treated as pariahs because they don’t want to share changing rooms with male-bodied people, where are your basic priorities?

So programmed are these dim ideologues, they must always see trans people as victims and so now they end up siding with the bully. We can all see that, except of course the unions who have also signed up to this nonsense and are now wondering why fewer women are joining them.

The NHS depends on, but does not value, women like Peggie. The board of NHS Fife and its political enablers are a disgrace. They are wasting huge amounts of money trying to uphold a belief system that is fast becoming discredited. Are female nurses entitled to single-sex spaces in which to change?

If your answer to that is “No” or “Yes, but…” then you are beyond help. Medical or any other kind.

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