From the moment Alexander "Sandy" Kemp held up his hand to pause the first witness in the Sandie Peggie tribunal so he could write down what had been said in laborious longhand, it was clear what sort of judge was in charge.🧵 **
Never mind that this unnecessary note-taking disrupted the flow of the evidence and the legal arguments, never mind that there was a stenographer in court and the hearing was recorded, Judge Kemp had his own way of doing things and he was sticking to it. **
Anyone who’s spent time around courts knows the type. It’s almost always a man, a man who believes he inhabits a realm above those of mere mortals, a king in his own courtroom. **
Judge Kemp was not a man to be told what to do by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. He knew better. And so he set o…
From the moment Alexander "Sandy" Kemp held up his hand to pause the first witness in the Sandie Peggie tribunal so he could write down what had been said in laborious longhand, it was clear what sort of judge was in charge.🧵 **
Never mind that this unnecessary note-taking disrupted the flow of the evidence and the legal arguments, never mind that there was a stenographer in court and the hearing was recorded, Judge Kemp had his own way of doing things and he was sticking to it. **
Anyone who’s spent time around courts knows the type. It’s almost always a man, a man who believes he inhabits a realm above those of mere mortals, a king in his own courtroom. **
Judge Kemp was not a man to be told what to do by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. He knew better. And so he set out to prove this in a judgment described by one legal expert as a "dog’s breakfast" and another as "irredeemably flawed”.
**
Over 312 interminable pages he sought to create a parallel universe in which the Supreme Court needed his help to make sense of their definitive judgment that woman means biological woman for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010. **
It was a universe in which some men might look a bit like women, in the right light and with the right hair and makeup, and might therefore be entitled to access single sex spaces intended for women, whatever the Supreme Court might think. **
They also apparently posed no greater danger to women than did biological women. In reaching his conclusions Judge Kemp chose not to open hyper links provided in evidence submitted to the tribunal, for reasons unclear. **
If this in itself was a giant leap, in making that leap some liberties appear to have been taken with the legal authorities quoted to support this novel position. How and why also remains unclear. This is extremely unusual: let’s come back to it further down. **
So who is Alexander "Sandy" Kemp, the man behind a judgment that is all but certain to be appealed? He was certified as an employment law specialist by the Law Society of Scotland in 1995, according to Scottish Legal News . scottishlegal.com/articles/emplo… **
As his Bloomberg Professional profile says, he’s been a full time employment judge since 2018. It’s a role with an annual salary of £139k and a pension. **
Before that, the profile notes, he “appeared regularly in Employment Tribunals throughout UK, mainly, but not exclusively, for employers.” bloomsburyprofessional.com/uk/author/sand… **
In one notable case, according to Scottish Legal News, he appeared for the offshore oil and gas industry to see off a claim by members of the offshore workforce under the Working Time Regulations 1998. **
None of this is intended to impugn the motives of Judge Kemp in the Peggie tribunal. Independence, impartiality and integrity are the basis of the UK judiciary and there’s no suggestion Judge Kemp would consider he fell short on any of these counts. **
But context matters. Judge Kemp is a man of the Scottish establishment. He dismissed most of the evidence from Sandie Peggie, a working class nurse, preferring the word of Dr "Beth" Upton, a middle class doctor who identifies as a woman, along with evidence from NHS Fife staff. **
It might be thought only natural that he would be inclined to accept, for the most part, the word of NHS Fife over that of its argumentative nurse. Everyone sees the world through their own lens. Judge Kemp doubtless felt that the evidence pointed that way. **
Still, the result was a triumph for the Scottish establishment view of the world. Yes, there was the minor drawback that NHS Fife screwed up its own witch hunt so badly it suffered a technical defeat but the nurse was put in her place and the waters on single sex spaces muddied. **
Well, that’s how it looked on the day the judgment was released. Since then, events have taken some unexpected turns. Let’s return to them now. **
While legal experts had lined up to point out flaws in the reasoning behind the judgment, some much more damaging claims have emerged around the authenticity of the quotes on which it relies. Some quotes used in the judgment appear to be untraceable or to have been edited. **
Law professor Dr Michael Foran says what’s happened is extremely serious and warrants careful attention, citing media reports that several of the quotes from caselaw in Peggie v NHS Fife may be entirely fabricated
**
The investigative website Wings Over Scotland has uncovered editing of quotes including the removal of the word "trans" from "trans woman" and the cutting of the rest of a sentence to change its meaning.
**
And Wings again has identified another quote that does not appear in the source claimed for it.
**
Maya Forstater has pointed out that a quote attributed to her case simply does not feature in that judgment.
**
So far there’s been no explanation from the tribunal about the issues around the quotations. More is expected to follow. **
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More from @newsandpics
Dec 9
Sandie Peggie has been badly let down by a legal system hamstrung by class and sexism. The employment tribunal simply couldn’t accept that a working class woman might be entitled to stand up for her rights. So it rejected her evidence and tried to rewrite the law.
Her win was a technical one; a grudging admission by the tribunal that NHS Fife made mistakes in handling her case. But the tribunal made it clear that it did not believe that female staff had any right to single sex spaces.
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Nov 8
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Nov 1
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Oct 5
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Sep 4
Today was a shameful day for Police Scotland. Women must be able to gather together in public to hold their government to account without being harassed and disrupted by an obnoxious man while police stand idly by. No other peaceful protest would be policed this way. 🧵
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Aug 14
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