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

What I’m finding truly interesting with these cases as a collective is that the true believers and the groupthink and the crowdsourcing your beliefs and values is it’s actively hampering them from presenting the best legal case. IANAL but I suspect any of us who have been hanging around discussing this for the last few years could present a better arguement for the other side in these cases. One we didn’t believe but certainly something more robust than this pile of shite.

Now obviously RMW has been very public about RMW’s views on these cases which sadly for RMW means RMW is not a good advocate for clients in these matters. It’s too personal. Too close. I don’t know if JR is similarly minded or if she’s providing good legal advice to clients who are rejecting that and instructing her to take this path of most special, marginalised, oppressed hurty feelings.

Just for clarity. It doesn't seem she made a reference to Bryson, just to men in women's jails.
He made that inference and upset himself with his own thoughts.

Yes, you're right - apologies.

She apparently said the changing room situation was "like the situation in prisons", which DU took to be a reference to Isla Bryson. I don't think that's an unreasonable assumption, in fairness, as Bryson was the most high-profile example of a man in women's prison at that point - though clearly Peggie was referring to the similarity of the situation (a man being in a female space), not specifically comparing DU to Bryson.

Yes,she should have never been punished. I. Get what you mean now.

It's misogynistic in itself, that a man can identify as a woman, make a woman feel uncomfortable, then for the woman to be suspended for expressing the fact, where the man identifying as the woman uses patriarchal roles to damage the woman further.

It is such a complicated Web, but to me it's just another form of misogyny and patriarchal issues.

IANAL but I suspect any of us who have been hanging around discussing this for the last few years could present a better argument for the other side in these cases. One we didn’t believe but certainly something more robust than this pile of shite.

I sometimes have that thought too, but looking at this case specifically, JR has been dealt a really duff hand. OK, she's played it badly, but is there anything that she could have done to make it seem as if DU had a strong case? I think she went for all the aggressive stuff about how terrible SP was, and how upset DU was, because it was all she had.

Bryson? The one who took part in a college beauty training course involving near-nudity, where a "coursemate further said that Bryson would accuse coursemates of being transphobic if "we said anything she didn't like"'.

Definitely no similarities here.

No, you don't need to tell an outsider.

Under Section 43B of the Employment Rights Act 1996, a disclosure is protected if it pertains to certain matters and is made to their employer or, where the employee believes the failure is solely or mainly to the conduct of someone other than the employer, to that person (note that this is just a summary of the relevant part - it is not an exhaustive description).

In this case, I think SP is claiming that she reasonably believed that DU was endangering her health and safety. If that is so, telling DU was indeed a protected disclosure (commonly referred to as whistleblowing, but that is not the term used in the law).

I was the poster that said the annual income of the Scottish Society for Rheumatology was £38k but looking more closely at their accounts that included £32k sponsorship for an event. Income in 2022 was only £11K. The donations made in memory of Alex Bell are really significant income for the charity.
The bursaries for 2023 were £1796 and £1517 in 2022

She's such a brave lady to stand up for this.

Didn't say "hi" to DU and did not maintained the eye contact. The audacity!!!

How can he not attend? I’m totally in the dark about these kind of proceedings but wasn’t he due to be cross-examined on Friday before the delay?

JR has been dealt a really duff hand.

We don't actually know this, do we?

We may not like JR's approach but it shores up the respondents' position that SP is bullying and vexatious which seems to be their defence argument (if I understand the response to the claims correctly).

For all we know at this point, JR may be correct and she may have correctly accounted for "all the mysteries". It's entirely plausible that the IT search will produce nothing (I still say that given it's an ideology-captured organisation, the metadata search should be carried out by a neutral 3rd party but accept that it's not possible).

I have my own assumptions and speculations about the intersection of policies and ideology with NHS Trusts. I certainly have my own about the relative support for women and members of the sacred caste.

But, until next week, we don't know anything about what may or may not be present in as yet non-disclosed documents, emails, texts, Datix reports and whether people were given implicit/explicit directions about their content and expected response/conduct.

Men in women’s prisons is similar to men in women’s changing rooms- women can’t easily avoid them.

Upton leaps straight to rapists, because he sees no issue with men in women’s spaces- unless they are rapists.

He doesn’t get the basic ‘men don’t belong in women’s spaces, whether or not they are rapists’ argument at all.

So this will be more or less what they usually raise in a year all in one hit? Wow!

Excellent point. Up to his behaviour escalating, he was supposed to be accepted and embraced as 'one of the girls' - a harmless transwoman.

My apologies. The well-stocked fridge shows you are clearly a woman❤

It means that even in the event of a positive outcome for SP, it wouldn't compensate for the awful stress and worry that she has gone through between being suspended and (we hope!) vindicated

If it's any consolation, I think it's a stretch to consider DU as 'winning' regardless of the outcome of the tribunal.

I work with vulnerable children and adolescents. Based on his presentation in court, DU seems likely to fit the profile of many of my patients. With this in mind, I expect that unless DU gets the right sort of support (both at work and personally) he is destined for a poor quality of life. I expect his quality of life since transitioning - and probably before- is limited. He probably thought transitioning was 'the answer' to his problems and thinks that the reason things haven't improved since transitioning is down to SP, and possibly others. The outcome of this case, whatever it is, is unlikely to resolve his issues. His prognosis is poor until/ unless he stops viewing others as responsible for his psychological issues. I am not sure winning or losing will change this.

🎶 Big boned! I'm a big boned beetle🎶

I'd love to hear the full song!

I try to be my authentic beetle self at all times. Alas I still have the needs of an actual woman!

I think if I admitted to anyone outside the house that I am in fact a beetle rather than a woman that a padded cell would be in my future!

But beetle or woman I'm still big boned! Nothing to do with my diet honestly.

<wanders off munching on cake>

I missed the use of the term "my people." - who are they? They are not women!

Many moons ago, I fought an Employment Tribunal Case over 5 years and at least in part understand the sense of injustice that SP is going through and the impact on her personal life. see BF Components Ltd v Grace [2008] EWCA Civ 393 CA. NC will be familiar with the Specialist Employment Barrister, a good friend, who represented me at the Court of Appeal, having self-represented at all times.

It is now established Case Law, and the case is occasionally quoted - for there to be consideration of illegal conduct, misrepresentation has to be a component for conduct to be illegal or tainted with illegality.

Upton is a Dr who is misrepresenting his sex and is fully aware he is doing so. His conduct entering a changing room exclusively reserved for the use of females - and not his community or his people by way of his own submissions through the Tribunal - is illegal. I think this is a point worth pressing I think I'll start a new thread in legal matters.

@Boiledbeetle I think we should just refer to you as an unusually impressive beetle

From the other thread about the Sodha piece, the Observer is soliciting email responses of up to 250 words.

https://suno.com/song/b5a4077d-0cf0-42e1-87e6-26b49d2175d7

I sometimes have that thought too, but looking at this case specifically, JR has been dealt a really duff hand. OK, she's played it badly, but is there anything that she could have done to make it seem as if DU had a strong case? I think she went for all the aggressive stuff about how terrible SP was, and how upset DU was, because it was all she had.

Has anyone got a handle on what supporters of DU are thinking/saying? I saw some screenshots from X that suggest they think that, so far, it's going in his favour and the intervention to gather more information is reflective of desperation on the part of NC to form an argument to support SP's case.

It's guess what would be most interesting is what independent observers make of proceedings so far.

JFC, that's horrifying! The man gets a private room while the woman with a newly transplanted kidney gets put on a public ward, with all the comings and goings of visitors, then she nearly dies from infection. But the man got his own private room, so that's okay. Someone make it stop, please.