THE NHS has been accused of being “delusional” when it sacked a nurse who complained about a trans doctor using female changing rooms.
Sandie Peggie was suspended after she objected to having to share a changing room with Dr Beth Upton at the NHS Fife hospital where they both worked in Scotland.
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Ms Peggie was facing allegations of misconduct, failures of patient care and misgendering Dr Upton.
None of them were upheld in an internal disciplinary hearing
At an employment tribunal where Ms Peggie is suing both the health board and the doctor, her lawyer Neomi Cunnigham said: “The organisation is in the grip of a delusion.”
She went on to accuse the health board of having a “heresy hunt” against Ms Peggie.
She told the tribunal in Dundee: “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,” The Times reported.
The lawyer went on to accuse the NHS of “character assassination” and “groundless smears”.
However Upton and NHS Fife’s case is that Peggie’s argument is mostly based on a “gender critical campaign”.
They claim she faced action not because of her beliefs on gender, but due to the “objectionable and inappropriate” way in which she voiced them.
The tribunal resumed after the UK Supreme Court ruled in April that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act “refer to a biological woman and biological sex”, a ruling which has been publicly welcomed by Ms Peggie.
NHS Fife has spent more than £220,000 defending itself in the employment tribunal.
The extent of the cost was uncovered following an intervention by Scotland’s information commissioner.
Author JK Rowling slammed the NHS bosses as “hapless” when she voiced her opinion on the row.
The Harry Potter writer, 59, also took aim at former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, suggesting the “unprofessional” behaviour of NHS Fife was a direct result of her legacy.
Writing on social media, Rowling fumed: “This is Nicola Sturgeon’s legacy.
“… a government that publicly backs the hapless, unprofessional, ideologically captured health board that’s persecuting a nurse for asserting her legal right to a single-sex changing room.”
It was Rowling’s beloved group For Women Scotland which also launched a long-running legal battle with the Scottish government over how a “woman” was defined in Scottish law.
The Scottish government had argued people with gender recognition certificates (GRCs) should be protected from sex-based discrimination, meaning a transwoman would be considered a woman.
However, campaign group For Women Scotland claimed this only applied to people born as a female.
In April, the Supreme Court‘s landmark judgement ruled that it was unanimously determined “sex is binary” and that female-only spaces must be protected on the basis of biology.
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