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

We don't know. There's some speculation about JK Rowling being a possibility but that is just speculation.

Yes, thank you for the reminder. Surely he should be considering women as "his people".

We haven't heard about contemporaneous Datix entries in the context of claiming SP compromised patient safety but apparently these are Schrodinger's claims. (And, it doesn't mean that there aren't any. I'm truly baffled as to what has or has not been documented despite the importance of due process.)

However, please correct me someone, didn't KS (a consultant - Kate Searle) enter a Datix about the Christmas Eve CR incident? Apologies if I got that wrong and it was about concerns re: staffing over the holiday period when SP was placed on "special leave" prior to suspension.

A nurse's 30 year career in jeopardy because of this.

I can't wait to see the emails/communications re how this was investigated and why it warranted suspension and then supervision, assuming we don't find out on Monday that the dog has eaten them.

It's like reading a reddit post that you know is pure fantasy on the writers part.

Yes, the “my people” and my “community” jumped out at me too (thanks for the transcript @StellaAndCrow).

I think it hints to what degree he has gone into work in misguided “Braveheart” mode. He feels part of a movement with “people” he can report to in fighting the good fight, and is not alone with his “female” thoughts.

It's absolutely trivial. An MAU nurse has more than once done this to me, I think probably intending to demean me (long story); but whether or not this was the case it was not a patient safety issue at all is I am quite capable of checking the observations reasonably promptly, and it would not have saved my time or the patient's had I stood and watched her do it.

I've been trying to write something along the same lines and gave up as thought I'd get deleted!

I may well still be! It's like Russian roulette! I love a gamble 😁

As a current cartoon caption on TwiX says:

If women don't require single sex spaces to be safe from men, why do transwomen need access to women's single sex spaces to be safe from men?

https://x.com/velvethammer/status/1887972506172064239

Wearing a skirt and poorly applied makeup and then there's Braveheart.

This is the million dollar question $$$

It certainly blew up in her face and made her look like an arsehole.

The whole, opposition in court playing on different teams but courteous elsewhere was absent. She was rude and dismissive.

You'd think that someone working in A&E would be able to cope with the harsh world of reality. DrU has been living in fantasy land and that's incompatible with the real world but he sees that as the world out to get him rather than his view being out of step with everyone else.

Dr U submitted a Datix about the Christmas Eve incident while a consultant (can't remember which one) supervised him doing this. Dr Kate Searle apparently sent an email to 17 members of staff some time around Christmas (can't remember the date) the content of which NC remarked was...unusual? (I can't remember the word she used. It wasn't 'unusual') but we don't know what was in this email, yet.

I have to ask this in case I forget, I'm still reading to the end of the previous thread.

Q. Can DU be cross examined on Monday if the relevant documents/email trails etc. that were initially "missing" have not yet been supplied, i.e. "we are still in the process of getting them Judge".

It sounded too me like a pragmatic idea, in a busy dept for Dr U to do the OBS, rather than one of them do their bit and the other hang around or the other go off and then get caught up in something else and not get back in a timely fashion. One person doing both ensures that both things happen.

@oldwomanwhoruns The problem is you're expecting NHS Fife to apply logic and follow the law. It's becoming fairly apparent they have neither the ability or inclination to do either of those things 😂

But seriously, I think the real problem there is that the definition of woman has been deliberately muddled over recent years, with boundaries consistently eroded, such that even though there is actually a good level of clarity, lots of people aren't aware of that. Combine that with people who either don't have the time or desire to check, or ability to recognise it as something worth checking, and we end up here. Plus, as someone else said upthread, I'd guess Dr U gives off litigious vibes and some, not very bright strategic, people will see that as best dealt with by rolling over rather than best dealt with by being 100% sure of the law and doing and saying as little as possible until you are positive you can defend everything you've done in a tribunal. I seriously struggle to understand what their HR were doing on this, the potential for this has been rumbling for at least five years, a decade or more for those with their ear to the ground, so how a huge employer with a requirement to provide changing rooms across multiple sites didn't have a watertight plan of action ready I don't know. It's not like they are a tiny organisation who might reasonably assume that they were statistically unlikely to encounter this issue. They should have been ready.

Placemarking, and continued thanks to all scribes (here and on TT) and all commentators. I'm learning a lot!

@NotAGentleReminder it was an "intemperate" email.

Thanks for the new thread! Can't believe the old one filled up so quickly! Don't know if this has been mentioned yet but Mr Menno on Twitter was saying that a witness saw one of DU's pals (also a TW, big hulking one 6ft+ in a dress) was using the small ladies toilet at the tribunal. FFS.

Can someone spell this bit out for me please?
Re the first investigation that wasn't an investigation according to JR.
Is that because she is trying to argue it was incident recording via Datix rather than an HR investigation?

I am sorry to bring it up now (too late for this thread), but each time there's a new thread, I notice that the start date of the tribunal is said to be "Monday 3rd January 2025", and it was actually Monday 3rd February 2025. Every time there's a new thread, I check the header to see if January is still there, and it is. It's a typo and I shouldn't be bothered by it, but I am. So as there will likely be several new threads after this one, please could "January" be replaced by "February" in future headers?

Thanks.

<shuffles away awkwardly>

NC's normal stance (from what I have seen) is "well we would have asked why XYZ happened,but we can't tell"

"Ideally we'd have checked that this complaint was made promptly and on the system, but they appear to have mislaid the evidence one way or another".

She simply flags what a reasonable ET would expect to see and who they would hear from and reminds everybody that they haven't.

It is blistering

I simply do not believe any of that has happened. You can see in photos of him that he's a large, well built, very masculine looking man. No-one is mistaking him for a woman.

I knew a guy who started wearing skirts and got hassled in the neighbourhood he lived. But it wasn't because he was mistaken for a woman (`misogyny') but because he looked odd. I guess any guy who wears girly clothes or puts frilly hair clips or whatever will unfortunately get titters from yobs - but it is a stretch as DU has done to equate this to everyday misogyny!