Ideology ahead of staff safety
It should be a cause of celebration that NHS Fife has caved to the inevitable and cleared nurse Sandie Peggie of misconduct in the bitter dispute over single-sex spaces.
The specifics of the 2023 incidents involving trans doctor Beth Upton aside, the case has lifted the lid on a management culture which placed ideology ahead of staff safety and the efficient running of its services, not to mention common sense. And it has also revealed the waste of increasingly scarce resources on backroom bureaucrats who receive handsome salaries but have no impact on patient care.
Apart from spending £220,000 defending the case, NHS Fife employed a woman in her 20s as an equality and human rights officer, a role which included advising staff on what pronouns to use, on a salary of over £50,000 a year.
I’m sure she’s very nice and it’s not all her fault, but her only previous NHS experience was as a Covid tracer, yet senior staff deferred to her ruling that because Dr Upton identified as a woman, had the “right” to use female changing rooms.
NHS Lothian too has a large equality and diversity team, but meanwhile hundreds of patients are waiting two years for essential operations. The Sandie Peggie case is not just an issue for NHS Fife to address, but for the whole of NHS Scotland. A good clear-out of the useless boards, senior managers – and all the expensive ideological sinecures with no clinical benefit for patients – would be a start.
Sue Webber is a Scottish Conservative MSP for Lothian