Yeah, they would end up in tribunal pretty fast if they did that. Also, this story makes no sense from any point of view. Most jobs, especially higher level ones like IT jobs will have a phone interview with a recruiter first who will call them up and ask if they are interested or not. Even if they go directly to the company and get their CV submitted, HR will usually send a bunch of possible candidates to the manager of the team they are hiring in and ask who they want to get in. And again, at this point there will probably be a phone interview before the face to face one, if for nothing else just to make the appointment.

And again, no company, especially a medium -large one, because in the UK a company with a few hundred employees would count as large would make a mistake like that. What happened is that they might have mentioned that "oh, we thought you were a woman Alice" (using a name that can work both genders) and than promptly moved on.