NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #7

[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: https://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

Thread 6: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5269635-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-6

[Searle's] role in a&e is Deputy Clinical Lead, Patient Safety lead, workforce lead.
The workforce lead ought to have some training in/ understanding of employment law.

Hmm, in that case Upton certainly confided in somebody who should have been capable of delivering guidance grounded in knowledge. Searle isn't someone who should have been blindsided by unfolding events.

Curiouser and curiouser. Next week we should see JR's talking through Searle through her testimony. NC's scrutiny of it may illuminate many matters wrt to policy, training, and the particular flavour of employment law and who delivered that training.

Much of NHS Scotland is still signed up to Stonewall and competing in the WEI. Despite having the many factual errors in their "allyship" kit sent to them, they still endorse it.

No, this isn't a public inquiry but, as FWR so often remarks, the more we learn, the more obvious it is that we need one.

Agree. This really annoys me. I doubt Sonia Sodha wrote the headline though. I thought the article was brilliant.

Yes, either the documents & discussions aren't available/disclosed, in which case they suspended, changed the workplace & working hours, required practice to be supervised at all times of SP without having any paper trail to show the whys, where fors and to show that they did all this in accordance with policy, law and process.

Or, they present everything they were asked for and it shows squeaky clean decision making and documentation, they just failed to comply with any requests to provide this evidence in reasonable time thereby preventing SP and legal team from having fair chance to respond and build a case in that context

OR, they present everything and it shows a very poor state of affairs with timelines and decisions that do not and can not support the time line of the suspension and forced change in working conditions of SP but rather show a concerted effort to discredit a blameless SP or unduly favour DU and his wants/needs/account.

I can't see how any of these really help NHS Fife although clearly the second version would be the best they could hope for.

If it turns out that the health board concealed information then questions will need to be raised in Holyrood. The Tories are the only party which are actively supportive about women’s rights and there are national elections coming. The implications of sandie’s case are huge in many ways

That is good. Because most women wouldn’t have a problem with other women. Maybe colleagues who are are female although say that they identify as a man (maybe they even wear a suit to show their ‘manliness’). So it is incorrect to just state a ‘trans colleague’. It is a male colleague, how so ever they say they identify.

It is interesting that Upton allegedly wore a suit to the previous private hearing. It does seem rather odd, considering he was saying that nobody clocks that he is a man sort of thing. It is interesting how the cosmetic presentation has changed for this ET.

I disagree with some of what you have said. I think DU may actually be having a worrying weekend as the enormity of the failure to disclose comes to light. I expect at some point the hospital or their solicitor will be explaining the impact of this to DU. I have a feeling DUs parents may grasp the impact before DU.

I agree DU may not appear.

My concern is for SP, as it is feasible the ET may be postponed to allow justice for DU and the hospital. Naming DU as the second respondent was clever and for this reason the hospital have a duty of care to DU. A postponement is not what SP or NC want.

I can also believe the hospital may agree (be forced to agree due to new evidence) a settlement which would require DU to retract their claims and apologise.

The headline printed in the actual newspaper which I have in front of me says "Male".

Cannot tell if you are joking, but no one has died! I live in hope that she will come to her senses.

'That Sonia Sodha article is swapping trans' and 'male' at a rate of knots.

There'll be some heated texting going on 😁

'Male' currently winning...

Sandie’s dad’s memorial fund has passed 10k

How lovely for the family
alexander-herschell-bell.muchloved.com/

Imagine being Upton's parents? Someone suggested they look like recently retired GPs. They cannot actually view their entitled son as a woman. They must be mortified by his behaviour.

‘the wave of trans activism’ now means a little
more.

Yes, one is led to the inference, at any rate, that Dr Upton 'feared' using the male CR.
An interesting reaction, if indeed true, given that these male CRs were presumably for the use of DU's own colleagues - fellow-doctors/nurses. Surely all decent, responsible and hard-worked people one wouldn’t expect to threaten the safety of another colleague, however they chose to present? It really doesn’t reflect very well on DU's opinion of these male colleagues if DU expected them to attack him.

But of course it could just very well be that DU was determined all along to be in the female CR because, you know, validation.

A postponement is not what SP or NC want.

Possibly not. But equally, given the press is now following this story pretty widely, it would be interesting from a PR/optics perspective if the case has to be delayed because one or both of the respondents has withheld evidence. As the public slowly starts to get to grips with the Trump EOs, any journalists who dig in to defend self-ID and "the most vulnerable" in their tone are going to look increasingly desperate and mad.

So I think on balance, either increased scrutiny on this missing information or a delay will work in Peggie's favour.

Sorry I felt bad after typing that as it was dripping with sarcasm!
Hyperbole from your relative wound me up

True equality would mean someone like him couldn't manipulate others like this.

It's a sting for all minorities that those afraid of upsetting a minority would do so much to ruin a woman's career for not wanting to see a pecker whilst changing.

The word is mad.

Sorry I'm not sure I understand all of this @Harassedevictee - how would postponing be to allow justice for DU?

I thought the same about DU parents. They seem educated, professional, fairly mainstream middle class people. They may have been guilty of thinking they were just supporting their son against the meanie who called him names (like, omg, a man!) prior to the case but neither of them could fail to have take on board the issues as NC laid them out on Friday.

NC made a deliberate point of emphasising that DU was at risk of poor outcomes if the ET found inconsistencies or untruths in his testimony or his evidence to support it.That may have been the first time his parents began to understand the full enormity of the issues at hand, but I just can't see how people such as they seem to be would then fail to engage with the information and surrounding discussions re risk and liabilities.

This... 100%

On the last thread someone stated that mum is Clergy, Dad works for Edinburgh university in the library. I forget in which role.

This is very interesting and makes sense. I'd really like at some point some men to step up and have a protest in the mislabelled 'women's' (actually mixed sex) once the men with lady feelings have been let in - of course giving all the women due warning - UNLIKE NHS FIFE DID.

It's definitely sex discrimination against all the other men and it's about time they realised that the good men stay out so the bad men stand out doesn't work when you lose your job for pointing out men in women's spaces. So they're not being good men by staying out any more. It would be nice for them to stand up for women and girls, en masse preferably.

Equality ey. Not for poor women... still suffering the misogyny of man identifying as woman

There was a moment on Friday, when NC talked about the allegations of poor patient care and how serious this is when his father went bright red and there was an immediate and noticeable shift in posture. Watching it made me think that he'd just had a major 'oh shit' moment as he realised that his son might not actually be the victim in this situation.

Yes it will have been rumour and conjecture the old adage of 'no smoke without fire'.
Proper sensible conversations among her colleagues will also have been curtailed for fear of it leading to the same fate..

@CheekySnake could that have been anger at the accusation rather than concern? I wasn't watching so just wondering if there is another interpretation

I would regard a wave from 50cm away to be an act that attempts to force a response as it's almost in the face of the other person. It is a "pay attention to meeeeee" action.

DU seems to have a very skewed perception of of female interactions in the workplace - that everyone is going to be "hey girl" and affirm DU's womanliness - with even the shortest professional contact - it seems an odd expectation in a busy A&E setting. DU seems to demand that everyone affirms their status continuously which must be exhausting.

I also seem to remember at one of the A&E incidents that DU didn't know why SP left. Didn't know whether SP was dealing with other patients etc. SP was the triage nurse for A&E, DU did not reflect over the automatic ascribing of harassment to this situation rather than assuming that SP was really busy as most people would. Fife didn't seem to question this either and just accepted DU's version.