The Scottish Parliament has once more proved its uselessness

Yahoo

18-02-2025

If there was one case that shattered any pretence the Scottish parliament had about making a good name for itself, it came two years ago when a convicted rapist was sent to an all-female prison when he claimed to be a woman.
And now we have further confirmation with the astonishing case of a nurse who was suspended from duty and may face the sack, after she complained about a doctor, who was born a man but who identifies as a woman, using female changing rooms.
Sadly, for yet another high profile case both the Holyrood presiding officer Alison Johnstone and SNP minister Jamie Hepburn, rejected demands for a full debate on this latest scandal. The public deserve an explanation – the MSPs didn't get much of one.
The case of the rapist. Isla Bryson, locked up for a time in an all-women's jail outside Stirling, highlighted the dangers that the UK government averted when it was forced to veto former first minister Nicola Sturgeon's controversial gender legislation.
This would have allowed people over the age of 16 to change their gender by simply making a public declaration. If her Bill had become law, critics claimed, trans men could have gained access to female-only safe venues, such as prisons, changing rooms and public toilets.
But Sturgeon losing that battle led people to expect that the issue was settled. However, it is clear from the case of Sandie Peggie, a nurse with NHS Fife, that it is far from over. When she challenged transgender Doctor Beth Upton, in female changing rooms on Christmas Eve 2023, she was accused of 'misgendering' Dr Upton, which led him to file a complaint.
It was Nurse Peggie who was suspended and investigated for bullying, even though legal experts are adamant that NHS Fife were legally obliged to provide single sex spaces at places of work.
But it is she who now faces dismissal after a 30-year career, even though her tribunal will not resume until July.
The case is currently dominating the news agenda north of the border as well as being the 'talk of the steamie' (steamie being hotbeds of gossip in the old time tenement wash-houses) and in the pubs and cafés. However, shamefully, the one place where this almost open sore in Scottish society is hardly mentioned is its parliament.
In a bizarre reversal of the enhanced democracy that devolution was supposed to bring to Scotland, the parliament's presiding officer rejected Tory demands to ask urgent questions on the issue and the SNP government refused to make a statement – both claiming that the issue was sub judice.
However, the Tories' Murdo Fraser, who is a solicitor, insisted that the issue of sub judice did not apply in this case as it was an employment tribunal, not a judge-led criminal case sitting with a jury.
And his colleague Tess White insisted that Nurse Peggie was not the perpetrator in this case but the victim.
In the mind of many, one of the worst aspects of this case is that NHS managers deferred to an 'equality and human rights officer', rather than a lawyer, in declaring that the transgender doctor identified as a woman and had a right to access single-sex spaces.
But this was just another example of how in the Scottish parliament's short and undistinguished history it had failed to get to grips with an important issue of public concern. And it proved again that either this institution, or the people running it, aren't up to the job. Or both.
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