NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #12

[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 February 2025 and was expected to continue for 2 weeks although at the start of the second week getting everything done in this time period was looking less certain. The hearing commenced with Sandie Peggie giving evidence. Dr Beth Upton started giving evidence on Thursday 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
Thread 7: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5270365-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-7
Thread 8: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5271511-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-8
Thread 9: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5271596-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-9
Thread 10: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5271723-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-10
Thread 11: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5272046-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-11

BoswellToday's summary is good, but is it an over-optimistic interpretation of the morning's events?
I think that it would be easily possible to frame this morning a different way, with DU being patient & cooperative & truthful

Oh I’ve seen her on X she’s awful

Yes, look what happens when a nurse objects to his presence in a room!

This guy must be a risk to women. He would ignore a woman's initial request for a female clinician because he considers himself to be female and only on her further direct objection would he accept that she meant what she said. And then he would consider this to be a transphobic act for not respecting his identity. It's mind blowing that someone like this can work in a hospital. Whatever happened to consent and respecting patient's preferences?

Phew. I logged on at 8:45 hoping to catch up quickly and I have just got to the end of the thread. Except new posts have already come in.

My experience of senior nurses are that they are strong, no nonsense types, which we need to cut through the bullshit that this mediocre Dr is spouting.

Well, there's a turn up eh? Emails not disclosed, and there was an initial investigation.

Who could have guessed?

Yes it's a huge problem.

Just to clarify my last post, suspension when serious allegations regarding patient safety are made is reasonable. Unless I am missing something, the allegations by DU do not appear to be remotely serious. One appears to be DU's failure to understand how A&E operates, the other appears to be entirely about his feelings. These do not seem to me to be allegations that come anywhere near justifying suspension whilst an investigation is in progress.

It's what you see when you strip away irrelevant waffling.

This makes sense (from a fellow layman's legal perspective), thank you.

It'll certainly do as a reasonable assumption until someone with some actual legal knowledge comes along! No offence intended BTW... I count myself in this too 😁

So, building on that:

a) DU's belief carries no more weight than any other belief that hasn't got a court ruling on its WORIADS status e.g. flat earth belief
b) all beliefs (including WORIADS) are subject to the Nolan Principles in public office. Objectivity being one such principle. So presumably the distinction would be that someone who holds a WORIADS belief should objectively be allowed to practice their own belief as long as it doesn't have a detrimental impact on others e.g. no public body should force all women to wear hijabs just because some men/women believe that women should do this
c) where a belief is not WORIADS, nobody should expect an accommodation to be made for their belief, managed as a serious request through a neutral, non-judgemental process e.g. flat earthers can't tie up government funds to evaluate shipping lane safety to stop boats falling off the planet, gender identity believers can't waste public funds processing complaints that others won't validate their belief.... including in courts.

Gender identity belief falls down on point b as well, even if it's a WORIADS belief. But it's a shocking waste of public funds if it's not already got legal status as such and it's not yet been tested in law. I hope this court case seeks to answer this question 🤞🤞

And I'm not sure why FU would choose to withhold emails that focused on his wellbeing when the substantive case they are trying to make is that SP's behaviour has damaged his wellbeing. Surely the emails were serve as evidence of this?

They ruled gender critical beliefs to be WORIADS. They did not rule on opposing beliefs.

As far as I know, gender ideology has never been formally subjected to the Grainger tests.

And he doesn't appear to have a good idea of the time/date the allegations happened which must weaken his argument FGS.

I so hope that you prove to be right Datun. DU is just so convincing, and the judge seems to like him 😕

That's why I think the term well-being will be rather euphemistic.

Yes I know, this is now the third time on the thread I’ve explained that I misunderstood. Serves me right for multitasking :)

I think it will be, given the EAT comments, but whether DU’s manifestations of that belief are covered, who knows

Agree 100% plus also the fact that if someone explicitly does not consent on the basis of his male sex, he will consider this harassment and aggression and therefore he could deny care.

These terms need much stricter definitions as apparently we're in Alice in Wonderland where everything means what someone says they mean (except for women, they're not allowed to self-define words of course).

He was probably waiting for his wife to give them a good wash

Yes, you can't underestimate how a man who has no real idea of what women go through in terms of misogyny, will back up another man, I agree.

I still think that the summary is accurate tho.

Our problem is, we cannot account for the judge. For his prejudices, intelligence, experience, etc.

Hopefully Naomi will have a whole bunch of more stuff.

Just to clarify my last post, suspension when serious allegations regarding patient safety are made is reasonable.

And the first duty of the manager should have been to hear both sides.
Not act on one person's say so about untested allegations which could potentially end a senior nurses career.

I couldn't watch this morning, but I felt on other days the judge was just being neutral and applying the principles of the tribunal.

I think NHS Fife are in deep trouble whatever the reasons they give for justifying SP's treatment & suspension. The problem is those Upton involved in the aftermath of the CR exchange. They immediately went straight to an extreme interpretation of events - KS's email to the ED demonstrates this & from NC's description of the content, it paints both an overreaction & extreme bias in her presentation of what Upton claimed to have happened. From the outset, the chain of events went to extremes & no one appears to have put the breaks on what subsequently happened - instead they sought more to pad out the complaint/wider details. With what appears to be a cover up of an initial investigation that's wasn't an investigation, but now is confirmed an investigation from the newly disclosed emails, it doesn't appear to be the case that NHS Fife acted in good faith with bad or embellished information. There appears to have been very little good faith & a lot of unreasonable responses & reactions from people who should know better.

With all the various training sessions on trans rights that's been going on for a long time within the NHS, those sympathetic to someone like Upton (I think) are primed to go straight to uber ally mode - effectively activist mode - which isn't appropriate for an employee investigation over an incident like this. Cool heads were needed & that's the last thing that happened.

Whether that's down to Upton making a meal out of the impact on his mental health or over egging SP's actions with heavy implications of extreme bigotry or whatever, NHS Fife don't have a get out option because they were fair, balanced & objective in their handling of this. It looks very much like too many jumped on this as an opportunity to demonstrate just how much of an ally/activist they were to Upton. With SP expected to take her punishment & other heed the warning should anyone else have a problem with the man in the female CR.

All my opinion/speculation on what I've seen/heard so far.

Is anyone still in the waiting room? It's so frustrating

Thanks for the thread. I only get to see it at lunchtime so am v behind.
Please can someone recap

• which emails have been asked for this time?
• how did their absence come to light ?

This is why he is perhaps the perfect person to have come to tribunal and to help get clarity in the law. His demeanor may be calm but his words are not. The more DU says and the weirder his views get, the further he gets from the "typical person" legal test, the better!

Imagine if he had been less fervent and less indocrinated. It is brilliant he has so much to say. He's getting all the hoo-haa out under oath. It's a gold mine!

How will politicians and lawmakers be able to align themselves with this? Although maybe they aren't bothered about the truth either?

If we think about what SP said about just wanting understanding, trying to explain and Dr saying the words sorry but not seeming to understand. Well the tribunal (and all observers) is getting to experience exactly what Sandie did. In DU's own words "unusual behaviour" and willingness to put their own wishes above the needs of others. Whether that is Sandie or colleagues or - as we now know - patients.

No matter what happens with this Tribunal it will go to appeal. Bring on the sunlight!