NHS nurse claims staff stayed silent in trans rights fight 'out of fear'

Sandie Peggie, an NHS nurse at the centre of a second employment tribunal, is now taking the Royal College of Nursing to court, claiming the union failed her because of her gender-critical beliefs. She previously brought a case against NHS Fife after sharing a changing room with transgender colleague Dr Beth Upton at Kirkcaldy's Victoria Hospital in December 2023. That tribunal gave her a partial win, upholding a harassment claim against the health board while dismissing the discrimination and victimisation allegations. Now she says the RCN, the world's biggest nursing union, refused her adequate support and failed to tell her she had a legal claim against her employer.

The RCN denies it. It describes itself as an anti-discrimination organisation, says it supports all its members, and is defending the tribunal.

This is a dispute between an individual nurse and her union about the quality of representation she received. That is a legitimate matter for a tribunal to examine. Whether the RCN gave Sandie Peggie proper advice, whether it took her situation seriously, whether it failed in its duty to a member: those are real questions and she is entitled to have them heard.

But the framing around this case, and the story the Daily Express tells about it, is not neutral reporting of an employment dispute. It is a sustained piece of advocacy for a particular position on trans rights, told through the language of nursing, safety, and silence.

What the framing does

Look at the witnesses being called. Bethany Hutchison, who was involved in a case concerning a trans nurse called Rose using facilities in line with a transitioning-at-work policy. Jennifer Melle, who refused to use pronouns for a patient the article describes, at length and with evident relish, as a "6ft bearded convicted male paedophile." The inclusion of that description is not journalism. It is designed to make the reader recoil, and to attach that recoil to the idea of trans people in healthcare settings generally.

I have heard this technique used many times. Find the worst imaginable example, real or constructed, and make it stand for everyone. It is not an argument. It is a way of ending one.

Naomi Cunningham, Sandie Peggie's barrister, is also the chair of Sex Matters, an organisation that campaigns specifically against legal protections for trans people. JK Rowling, who is bankrolling related lawsuits, has been explicit about her views. The Christian Legal Centre is also named as a supporter. This is not a neutral coalition of people concerned about union representation. It is a coordinated effort, using employment law as its current vehicle, to push back against trans inclusion in workplaces and public services.

None of that means Sandie Peggie's union claim has no merit. Both things can be true. But readers deserve to know the wider context, and the Express does not offer it.

The silence that actually worries me

Here is what I keep returning to. Sandie Peggie says her colleagues stayed quiet because they were frightened. She says there was "general chit chat" among staff about being uncomfortable with Dr Beth Upton using female changing rooms, but that nobody came forward to give evidence because of how they had seen her treated.

Fear is real, and it shapes behaviour on wards in ways that matter.

But I find myself thinking about a different kind of silence. The silence of the trans nurse, or the trans patient, who has registered what is being said about people like them and decided it is not safe to speak. The trans staff member who uses a facility, or asks for a pronoun to be used, and becomes the subject of "general chit chat" among colleagues. The trans patient admitted to a ward where some of the people caring for them have publicly aligned themselves with campaigns to restrict trans people's legal recognition.

A ward where staff are frightened to advocate is not a safe place for a trans person to be ill, and that is the sentence I cannot get past.

What this costs Dr Beth Upton

Dr Beth Upton has been at the centre of this story since December 2023, named repeatedly in tribunal proceedings, in newspaper coverage, and now again here. Dr Upton went to work. Dr Upton used a changing room. That is the entirety of what the original complaint was about.

The article describes Dr Upton as a "transgender medic" and treats that fact as self-evidently relevant to questions of safety and propriety. It is not. Dr Upton is a doctor doing a job. The sustained public attention on Dr Upton's identity, without any suggestion that Dr Upton has done anything wrong, is something I find genuinely troubling, whatever the outcome of the various proceedings.

What I hope people take from this

Employment tribunals are important. Unions have real obligations to their members, and if the RCN failed Sandie Peggie in the ways she claims, that deserves scrutiny. I am not dismissing her case.

What I am asking is that people read this story, and stories like it, with their eyes open to what is also happening. The repeated, high-profile, well-funded litigation around trans people in workplaces is not simply a series of unconnected disputes about changing rooms and pronouns. It is a co-ordinated effort to make trans inclusion in public life legally and practically harder. The people funding it have said so directly.

And in the middle of it all are trans people: nurses, doctors, patients, colleagues. People going to work, or going to hospital, or simply trying to live. The noise around them is extraordinary. Their own voices, in this coverage and in so much coverage like it, are almost entirely absent.

That absence is the silence that worries me most.

If there is a news story you would like me to cover then just let Sammy know.

Dr Helen Webberley is a gender expert, medical educator, and advocate for trans health and equality.