Hospital managers have been urged to admit defeat in their legal battle against a nurse who complained about sharing a changing room with a transgender medic. Veteran nurse Sandie Peggie is taking NHS Fife to an industrial tribunal after she was suspended for saying she should not be forced to share a changing room with transgender medic Dr Beth Upton at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife.
The NHS board said it would “carefully consider” the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex. But local MSP Murdo Fraser said: “How can NHS Fife possibly continue to waste public funds defending the Sandie Peggie case when their defeat is inevitable?”
He said: “They basically don’t have a leg to stand on now.
“The judgement from the Supreme Court is a comprehensive, detailed and authoritative unanimous judgement from the country’s highest court which settles the law on the definition of a woman.”
A similar case has also been brought by a group of Darlington nurses, who are taking County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust to court saying they were expected to share a changing room with a transgender colleague.
In a written ruling, the judges highlighted “changing rooms, hostels and medical services” as examples of single-sex services that required “a biological interpretation of ‘sex’”.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said: “In East Fife, Sandie Peggie was suspended after she complained about a male doctor who identifies as a woman sharing the same communal changing room.
“A few weeks ago, I met the Darlington nurses forced to bring legal action after a male nurse started using their changing room. These nurses’ careers are threatened, but the man has the support of the ill-advised hospital managers, who misunderstand the law.”
A spokesperson for NHS Fife said: “NHS Fife notes the clarity provided by today’s Supreme Court ruling regarding the legal definition of a woman. We will now take time to carefully consider the judgment and its implications.”
The issue of whether trans-women should be treated as women in all respects has been a minefield for Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who claimed in 2023 that “for 99.9% of women, it is completely biological . . . and of course they haven’t got a penis.”
Former Labour MP Rosie Duffield resigned the party whip last year partly due to what she saw as lack of support from the leader over her support for women’s rights. She had said that “only women have a cervix” but asked if he agreed, Sir Keir said in 2021: “Well, it is something that shouldn’t be said. It is not right.”
However a Labour source claimed last night that Sir Keir has “hauled the Labour party back to the common sense position” on the issue.
