NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #6

[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

Thread 5: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5269149-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-5

Personally I don't care if a man claiming to be a woman/trans/whatever is a 6ft7 bearded father of six or a 5ft4 fully castrated virgin who has had facial feminisation surgery and 'passes' fairly well - he shouldn't use female-only facilities.

It seems a bit smelly IMO.

Yes, like a rotting fish head.

Yes this is what I found confusing - that the apparent reason (respondent 1?) gave for ED no longer leading the investigation (which was later not even an investigation but NC says they admitted it was?) was because ED's earlier conversation with SP (about the changing room incident?) came to light...but then it was ok for ED to later take a statement from BU? It doesn't make sense.

Who was the sensible sounding letter that said it was unwarranted and just put in female CR from?

I think that was from Peggies solicitor after she was suspended?

Maya's witness statement is available to read. I'm a subscriber so I get a regular update by email and there was a link in this week's round up. It's probably on Sex Matter's website.

Margaret Gribbons (MG), SP's solicitor.

https://sex-matters.org/posts/other-resources/witness-statement-of-maya-forstater-in-sandie-peggie-v-nhs-fife-and-dr-elizabeth-upton/

Just seen it's linked in the TT substack that is linked in the OP, too.

I'm coming round to the view that while Upton is clearly a vexatious whining arsehat, Fife are throwing him under the bus too, albeit to a lesser extent than SP. He's just the tool they are using to do it. Which begs the question why.

JR says with a tinkly laugh that she may have just received statements, that arrived unbidden in her in inbox.

Toxic? How exactly? Because she doesn't want a man in the women's changing rooms? Because she wants privacy from men when she has her period? Because she didn't look him in the eye? Because she called him a man, unlike all the others who know he's a man but are scared to risk their jobs?

It could be this. When action is threatened against my employer (at one stage we had a departmental loon who did this regularly) whoever he specified was emailed by our in-house legal people and asked for all emails, Teams chats etc between specific dates. I was almost always a nil return, apart from one occasion when I'd emailed him offering to help him with something he was struggling with, but it would have been very easy to simply not say. The system was very reliant on our honesty.

From personal experience it is, however, the sort of knot NHS managers get themselves into when they are trying to manage out someone they don't like. I believe the private sector generally does it better.

Thanks, just been catching up on this bit of TT from today. The judge seemed rather irritated.

I don't think it is ever a good idea to irritate the Judge I would of thought that was basic level learning for legal people.

The judge doesn't like people who ignore judge's orders, and then try to deflect from it, which is fair enough.

Maybe I'm imagining things but I didn't get the impression JR was happy with the situation she was in, at all, at all. Would have been interesting to hear the conversations outside the hearing room.

And that should have been - would have thought, sorry pedants I was thinking of something else and typing at the same time - that's my excuse and I am sticking to it.

I was rather shocked! It's so unlike you!!

Nl, she was careful to say, "my instructions are to report"

There is a counter-argument that if you really irritate the judge he may bend over backwards to be fair to your client rather than indulge his annoyance.

I question why we're here at all

I thought incoming politicians went on about no men in female CR

Why is this going on and silence?

Scotland's a foreign country, they do things differently there.

But if a barrister knew something to be untrue, they wouldn't be able to say that, would they? They would at least have to be ignorant of the truth, or believe it to be true?