9 JULY 2025
Taxpayers have been forced to fork out £220,500 to defend NHS Fife and Dr Beth Upton in the employment tribunal brought by A&E nurse Sandie Peggie.
However, the final bill will continue to rise when the case continues, with a further 11 days set aside for new hearings. And if Ms Peggie wins the case, the cost will rocket.
A number of news outlets have spent months attempting to pin down the secretive health board on how much they were spending.
In May, the Scottish Information Commissioner was forced to intervene and ordered NHS Fife to reveal what information it held about its legal bill. Now it has emerged the figures were quietly slipped out on Monday.
Ms Peggie, 50, was suspended after she challenged the presence of Dr Upton, born a biological male, in the female changing rooms at Kirkcaldy’s Victoria Hospital on Christmas Eve 2023.
She later sued her employers for sexual harassment and discrimination, with previous hearings in February revealing the widespread failure by Scottish public bodies to provide single-sex changing rooms.
I think we all need to understand that the real cost of this is far in excess of the £200k legal bill. Just think of all the hours that NHS Managers and the Scottish Government have put into defending their position… the real cost will be in excess of a £million. Sandie Peggie has had her world turned upside down and has been thrust into the media spotlight. There will be many more like Sandie who have yet to come forward.
One of the issues that this can be linked back to is the Gender Recognition Bill, proposed by the SNP and voted for by our very own Jackie Baillie and also supported by a couple of Tories.
Meanwhile, in the real world, far away from the radical left wing policies of the SNP and Labour, our local health services are on their knees and everyone is suffering as a result of Holyrood incompetence.
I sincerely hope that both the SNP and Labour make a public apology to Sandie after this and we can see a new Scottish Government elected in May next year.
We all deserve much better than this.