Sandie Peggie was the victim of a ‘full-blown witch-hunt’ from NHS Fife after refusing to change in front of a trans medic, a tribunal has been told.
Veteran A&E nurse Mrs Peggie has claimed that being made to change beside trans identifying Dr Beth Upton was unlawful.
The 51-year-old had encountered Dr Upton in the female-only facilities at Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy, and waited outside – but on Christmas Eve 2023 she challenged Dr Upton and shortly after was suspended from work.
Mrs Peggie has sued NHS Fife and the 30-year-old medic, and yesterday the landmark employment tribunal she brought began its final two days of public hearings.
In what has become an intensely bitter case, NHS Fife was yesterday accused by Mrs Peggie’s lawyer of being a ‘toxic workplace’ which committed a ‘heresy hunt’ against the nurse because it was in the ‘grip of delusion’.
Naomi Cunningham, closing the case for Mrs Peggie after a marathon run of hearings which began in February, said: ‘NHS Fife has subjected a nurse of 30 years unblemished service to a full-blown witch-hunt to punish her for standing up for her right not to undress in front of a male colleague.
‘And then, in an attempt to evade the consequences of that conduct, it has attempted a shockingly spiteful public character assassination of her.
‘It has subjected her supporting witnesses to groundless smears, it has attempted to drive a wedge between her and her lesbian daughter, it has subjected her to a protracted investigation of obviously false allegations of a potentially career ending gravity.
‘It has attacked the integrity of her legal team, it has defied tribunal orders, it has told countless lies.’
The lawyer said NHS Fife had argued as a ‘good employer’ it had an ‘obligation to see to the moral education of Sandie Peggie’.
But Ms Cunningham yesterday told the Dundee-based hearing: ‘It’s been made taboo to say that trans women are men. And that has an effect. It makes it difficult to hang on to reality but that reality is the law.’
‘In my submission, this suggestion from the first respondent [NHS Fife] that it is the good employer with an obligation to educate the claimant out of the bigotry that she has shown in refusing to take her clothes off in front of a male colleague is the point at which the respondents argument crosses the boundary from being merely obviously wrong to being morally repugnant.’
Mrs Peggie has come under intense scrutiny from NHS Fife KC Jane Russell, with private group chats being made public and even social media posts from her husband used as part of the health board’s case. Dr Upton has also came under intense scrutiny and cross-examination.
Yesterday Ms Cunningham said while giving evidence the medic appeared ‘self-assured tending to smug’.
NHS Fife had allowed the trans medic to use the female-only room in its emergency department.
Ms Cunningham said NHS Fife was in the ‘grip of a delusion’ and the ‘board has taken up gender identity belief as its institutional position’.
The lawyer said it was ‘not a rare delusion’ but one which had been ‘deliberately and elaborately fostered’ across the public and private sector.
She said: ‘That was wrong in all those different places, it was delusional in all those different places.
‘Because this is a delusional belief system it can only be maintained and enforced with bullying.
‘Reason doesn’t work. You can’t support a delusional belief with reasoned argument.
‘And that, in my submission, is a simple, economical, elegant explanation for why you’ve seen that the claimant was subjected to the vicious heresy hunt that was the result of her refusal to undress in a room with a man.’
The tribunal, which has already cost taxpayers more than £220,000 to defend NHS Fife, also started hearing the submission from Ms Russell.
The KC said that although Mrs Peggie described herself as being a ‘realist about sex in fact a careful excavation of her case exposes a striking level of unreality’ whose extent was demonstrated by the ‘presence of a number of inconvenient truths’.
Ms Russell said the ‘difficulty the claimant faces is she is trying to fit a square peg in a round hole’ and claimed the thrust of Mrs Peggie’s case came from a campaigning position.
She said: ‘In this case the board clearly took the view that there was no coherent reason to exclude Dr Upton.
‘Up until the claimant, nobody had complained and nobody has complained since despite the media attention which has been almost uniformly positive and supportive of the claimant.
‘One would think that this provided a rather encouraging backdrop to those who share her views and want to come forward.
‘The claimant has said these people are discouraged by what she describes as a climate of fear, but there is no evidence of that beyond the claimant’s last-minute assertion at the 59th minute of the 11th hour on the last day of the trail that there were 13 people who shared her concerns.’
While the case is expected to end today (TUESDAY), a ruling is not expected to come for some time.
Employment Judge Sandy Kemp the panel would not be able to start its deliberations until October.
The tribunal continues.