It’s the issue everyone is talking about. Every-one, that is, except MSPs when they are sitting in the Holyrood debating chamber.
The case of Sandy Peggie, the long-serving nurse with an unblemished record who was suspended by NHS Fife for bullying after she objected to sharing a hospital changing room with a trans woman doctor without a gender recognition certificate ─ in other words, a man ─ has come to symbolise the clash between extreme ideology which defies biology and what is blindingly obvious to the vast majority.
Through my work as an NHS supplier, I have been in changing rooms at Kirkcaldy’s Victoria Hospital and I can testify that there is very little privacy, just lockers around the walls of a square room. There were no cubicles and Ms Peggie was literally well within her rights to insist on a single sex space under the 2010 Equality Act, especially as on one occasion when Dr Beth Upton was there, she was experiencing a heavy period.
Whatever Dr Upton considers to be his rights, that cannot include making women feel extremely uncomfortable at a time of need. Without prejudging the employment tribunal’s outcome, by launching counter disciplinary action against Ms Peggie for misconduct and allegedly misgendering Dr Upton, NHS Fife runs a very high risk of scoring a spectacular own goal and costing taxpayers thousands of pounds in the process.
With the tribunal now adjourned until July, there is a vacuum of understanding about how public authorities should handle such matters and this week my colleagues sought clarity in the Scottish Parliament.
Time is always set aside for topical questions, but those on this subject were all overlooked by the Presiding Officer Alison Johnstone, despite there being nothing more topical than this, and an attempt by my fellow Conservative MSP Tess White to force a ministerial statement was voted down by the SNP and Greens.
It has now been revealed that health secretary Neil Gray was warned that NHS Fife may have acted illegally as far back as June last year, yet this has been allowed to drag on and Ms Peggie’s life will have been on hold for 19 months by the time the outcome is known.
If that was not worth a statement from Mr Gray, I don’t know what was, but maybe we shouldn’t be surprised the SNP and their Green friends reformed their alliance to save Mr Gray further embarrassment.
Scotland Secretary Ian Murray has rightly described this as a “sheer mess”, but it cannot be forgotten that his Labour leader Anas Sarwar forced his colleagues to support the Gender Recognition Reform Act.
Labour cannot therefore shrug off its part in creating the poisonous atmosphere by contributing the false impression that the political classes were almost united in their denial that women’s rights were under threat, giving encouragement to a minority movement which not only ignores reality but has become a vicious campaign against freedom of expression.
That Ms Peggie could be dismissed when her rights to a safe single sex space in which to change were being denied, will surely be a seminal moment, just as when a male rapist was sent to a women’s prison two years ago because he said he was a woman and wore lipstick and a pink wig.
This madness cannot end soon enough.
