{"id":215696,"date":"2025-10-21T14:59:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T14:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/215696\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T14:59:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T14:59:10","slug":"sandie-peggie-snp-ministers-told-nhs-fife-should-concede-defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/215696\/","title":{"rendered":"Sandie Peggie: SNP Ministers ‘told NHS Fife should concede defeat’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n The Times reports that, at a meeting attended by Neil Gray<\/a> and Shirley-Anne Somerville – the cabinet secretaries for health and social justice respectively – the crossbench peer said she \u201cwould have thought that following the Supreme Court judgment, there would have been a resolution\u201d and that \u201cresolution of this matter should be possible\u201d.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n Baroness Falkner told ministers that the health service was \u201cbound by the law and should not delay complying with it\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n In April, Britain\u2019s top judges ruled decisively that for the purposes of UK equality laws, humans cannot change sex.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n However, NHS Fife has\u00a0continued to fight the case involving Peggie, which centres on the nurse\u2019s opposition to having to share the women\u2019s changing rooms with Dr Beth Upton<\/a>, who identifies as female, at Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy<\/a>.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n Baroness Falkner(Image: )\n<\/p>\n

\n The decision to proceed with the defence\u00a0has added a six-figure sum\u00a0to an already huge legal bill, being funded by taxpayers.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n After the Supreme Court ruling in April, in which the campaign group For Women Scotland\u00a0won a landmark legal victory\u00a0against the Scottish government, NHS Fife faced calls to concede the case as Peggie\u2019s legal right to single-sex spaces based on biology had been emphatically established in law. However, the tribunal resumed in July.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n NHS Fife refused to confirm whether Baroness Falkner\u2019s warning had been passed on.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n Trina Budge, a director at For Women Scotland, said: \u201cI think everyone, except NHS Fife, bizarrely, can see they should have conceded the case and reached a settlement with Ms Peggie long before now. The Supreme Court ruling was the final nail in the coffin of any argument they conceivably had.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe question now is why the Scottish government has not heeded Baroness Falkner\u2019s advice and stepped in to limit the NHS\u2019s humiliation and, more importantly, to save taxpayers a fortune.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n For Women Scotland say the Scottish Government is backsliding on implementing the Supreme Court(Image: PA)\n<\/p>\n

\n NHS Fife continues to contest Peggie\u2019s tribunal case despite clearing the nurse in a separate internal disciplinary investigation, in which she was accused of misconduct, and rewriting its own policies to make clear that trans workers may no longer use facilities reserved for the opposite sex.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n Minutes of the meeting, released in response to a Freedom of Information<\/a> request, show that Falkner \u201ccautioned against delaying\u201d in following the law more generally, with the SNP then saying they were waiting for new formal guidance from the EHRC before rewriting policies.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n Falkner went on to state that the NHS was \u201cbound by the law now and should not delay complying with it\u201d, warning that failure to comply would expose the health service to risk.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n Raising the Peggie case specifically, she told ministers \u201cthat resolution of this matter should be possible following the Supreme Court judgment\u201d.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n The records of the exchanges add: \u201cShe [Falkner] noted that the ongoing NHS tribunal in Fife is expected to recommence in July and would have thought that following the Supreme Court judgment, there would have been a resolution to the litigation.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n A final ruling in the case is expected next month at the earliest, with legal experts seeing the Supreme Court judgment as delivering a significant boost to Peggie\u2019s case.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n The tribunal centres on a row Peggie had with Upton on Christmas Eve 2023 in changing rooms for female staff at the hospital.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n Read More:\n<\/p>\n

\n Peggie confronted Upton and said the doctor should not be using the women\u2019s changing rooms.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n Upton, who had been given permission to use the women\u2019s facilities by managers, claimed to have been subjected to a transphobic \u201chate incident\u201d. Peggie was suspended from work, investigated for bullying and threatened with the sack.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n NHS Fife maintains that the manner in which Peggie raised her objections were unreasonable. Supporters of the nurse insist she was merely standing up for her legal right to single-sex changing facilities.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n A spokesperson for the Equality and Human Rights Commission said: \u201cBaroness Falkner was not commenting on the potential outcome of the employment tribunal or the actions of the parties involved.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cInstead she sought to highlight that the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling of 16 April \u2014 on the definition of \u2018sex\u2019 in the Equality Act 2010 \u2014 would help bring the case to a conclusion.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cSeparate to these proceedings, we have engaged with NHS Fife on the provision of single-sex facilities for staff. This has included directing the health board to take corrective action to ensure compliance with the Equality Act and Public Sector Equality Duty.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n Asked whether Falkner\u2019s comments had been passed on, a spokeswoman for NHS Fife said that it would be inappropriate to comment on a live legal case.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Times reports that, at a meeting attended by Neil Gray and Shirley-Anne Somerville – the cabinet secretaries…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-215696","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}