NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #5

[nauticant]

Sandie Peggie, a nurse at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy (VH), has brought claims in the employment tribunal against her employer; Fife Health Board (the Board) and another employee, Dr B Upton. Ms Peggie’s claims are of sexual harassment, harassment related to a protected belief, indirect discrimination and victimisation. Dr Upton claims to be a transwoman, that is observed as male at birth but asserting a female gender identity.

The Employment Tribunal hearing started on Monday 3 January 2025 and is expected to continue for 2 weeks. The hearing commenced with Sandie Peggie giving evidence. Dr Beth Upton started giving evidence on 6 February.

Access to view the hearing remotely can be obtained by sending an email request to [email protected] headed Public Access Request (Peggie v Fife Health Board) 4104864/2024 and requesting access.

The hearing is being live tweeted by https://x.com/tribunaltweets and there's additional information here: https://tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr. This also has threadreaderapp archives of live-tweeting of the sessions of the hearing for those who can't follow on Twitter, for example: archive.is/xkSxy.

An alternative to Twitter is to use Nitter: https://nitter.poast.org/tribunaltweets

Thread 1: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5186317-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse

Thread 2: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5267591-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-thread-2

Thread 3: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5268347-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-3

Thread 4: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5268942-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-4

I know nothing about Fife, but I cannot imagine Dr Upton lasting 5 minutes in A&E on a Saturday night where I live.

@Signalbox

NC secured an order in the preliminary hearing that DU correspondence with the BMA should be disclosed but this was not forthcoming.

NC informed the Judge that this was necessary because she noted that the allegation that SP referred to UP being like Isla Bryson appeared and disappeared (ie he may have claimed this in his original complaint as a hate incident, but in a subsequent Investigation interview said something different)

And then whilst being examined by his own barrister he clearly stated that SP only said males in female prisons was a similar situation to him in her CR

He then went into a highly dramatic description of seeing his consultant to tell of his woe and actually demonstrated exactly how he had twisted what SP said.

He has totally discredited himself as a result.

I am confident if he is a no show that the judge will disregard his evidence in its entirety.

I'm still working through thread 4 and I note that Dr U is married and has a wife?!

I wonder if she believes her husband is a woman and that she herself is now in a lesbian relationship...

Bizarre and mind-bending

Placemarking and thanks for all commentary.

Married, with a female wife. It must be obvious to the panel that this is a heterosexual man in front of them, wanting to be able to undress in the women’s changing room.

This is what I don't understand. The Workplace Regulations 1992 is so clear, I don't see how anyone can argue that the Trust's policy is legal. How can they put Sandie Peggie through this farce when they are clearly breaking the law by failing to provide a single sex changing room for her?

Hope peeps do not mind my analysis,

I am going over DU evidence word for word.

His allegation about patient neglect on the part of SP may have been far more florid in the investigation stage (statement and interview) although i do not know.

But in giving his evidence in court today there was nothing that he said that had any such implications for patient safety, on the part of SP. All he came up with was that SP gave him a one line answer that “all was good”.

And that he had to do the observations.

He is a best prone to gross exaggeration at worse a down right liar.

I wonder, if he doesn't show, if it would be a reasonable inference for the panel to make, that he is just a generally weak and flakey individual, who cannot cope with pressure of any kind, and it has nothing to do with his ' trans' status and the alleged ' bullying'...?

@Lovelyview good question

Do we know this for sure, or could his spouse be another male who calls himself a woman, like him?

Massive lurker on this board - these tribunals are so eye-opening to watch. Huge thanks to the amazing vipers here generously keeping it all going in real time.

The donations have made me a bit misty-eyed - it’s £2.7k now compared to £420 this morning.

The Jo Bartosch article in The Critic introduced a new phrase to snicker at, ‘the boner of contention’

No, you’re right. We don’t know that for certain.Im basing that on watching his interactions with the support people behind him.

Thanks for the new thread @nauticant , I'm banking 10.14am as DU being a no show tomorrow...

Quick question, is anyone else obsessively refreshing the donations page, like watching a Blue Peter appeal totalizer?

No, just me, then?

I love this supportive community.

Well yes dont mind reports!!!!

In completely unrelated news, Some Like It Hot is on the telly right now. Haven't seen it since I was a kid. It's very strange watching it now!

Because he's an absolute melt?

There were a lot of questions where it seemed that DU was allowed to infer the emotions and views of SP based on their own perception of events. Will SP be allowed to counter any of that? It doesn't seem fair that DU is allowed to speak as to the role of nurses, or to speak about what SP was thinking if she isn't allowed to refute it at a later stage.

Interesting. There was a Zoe Davies in the same year as Upton in Madras College. Well, both in 6th Year in the same 2012-2013 photo.

All completely in the public domain.

it’s immaterial though. He could be married to anything or anyone. He is still a man.

So, not even an official falsification of his birth cert, marriage cert. No gra. Again immaterial in real life as he is still a man, even if had ‘woman’ tattooed on his chest. But seemingly getting an official written certificate saying ‘we say this man has transformed into a woman’ may be relevant to the hospital letting him swan into the women’s changing room.

@Lougle It will be the job of NC tomorrow to demonstrate this further and press him on the truth.

Thanks @Bannedontherun, but that will still be DU giving an account of the views/attitudes of SP. Will SP be able to say 'hang on a minute, when he said I thought this, I was actually thinking this' or 'Actually, the role of the nurse is to do this and 50 doctors I've worked with have been very happy to do obs in that situation', etc.?

I've just scanned through threads 2-5 today and my eyes are melting!
Unbelievable how weak the 'case' against SP is.

I'm confused, as always, as to whether DU thinks women are female or not.

I've got a hospital appointment in the morning.
Luckily, it's not in Fife. Phew!
But I will be looking in.😎

…and her family? I’d love it if some of her relatives were on here?

I know, it's conjuring up some sort of rural backwater health outpost where only genteel and calm patients very occasionally wander by.

I've worked in several EDs and in every single one, including the distinctly backwater DGH with almost no medical cover at night, I've been assaulted, spat at, slapped, punched, threatened, sworn at, had bins thrown at me, witnessed people in horrendous pain and distress. I have had to care for prisoners convicted of the worst crimes, and those who have only moments before killed a child in an RTC, or been involved a street brawl that's left their victims in a coma. I've had to care for people who are potentially infectious, or coated in chemicals that could be noxious. I've even had to care for a patient who was so violent the riot police with shields and dogs had to come into resus to contain them. I've held dead babies for hours, and resuscitated stab victims as the haemorrhage all over me.

We do all this with rare breaks, rare opportunities to drink or wee and rarely if ever chances to chat beyond a few words. We graft, hard, with patient care as our focus.

ED is not the place, or the time, or the space for people so self involved and lacking in purposeful activity as this.

FWIW, I've worked with people I don't like, even people I don't respect much. I've avoided people, engineered things to not be in the same place at the same time or to avoid direct conversations. I've had cross words or tense disagreements and I've even been shouted at or publicly criticised by senior staff. I haven't ever felt the need to record these occasions, to report them to anyone or do anything more than moan privately to a confidante at a later time - or have a fair and square conversation with the other person if there's a need or desire to clear the air.

It's just unbelievable, preposterous, that all of this has come together like this. That this much time, energy and money has been wasted.