A useful summation of the morning, from X:
Day 8 Peggie v NHS Fife - Morning Session
Dr Upton’s Cross-Examination Collapses Under Scrutiny, Exposing Contradictions and Obfuscation
Dr Upton’s cross-examination continued its downward spiral as Naomi Cunningham systematically dismantled his testimony, exposing contradictions, evasions, and what appeared to be deliberate obfuscation of key details. Throughout the session, Upton struggled to maintain credibility under sustained pressure, particularly when faced with his inconsistent recollections and apparent attempts to manipulate the investigatory process.
A key focus was the so-called “Snickers patient” incident, where Upton was questioned on whether he had worked alongside Sandy Peggie in that case.
Initially, he denied recalling her presence, but when presented with Peggie’s own clear recollection of the event, he wavered, unable to provide a confident response. Cunningham pressed him on whether he was deliberately obscuring the details, pointing out that if he had given a precise date for the incident, it would allow for corroboration—something she suggested he wanted to avoid.
Upton, predictably, denied this, claiming he simply couldn’t be sure, though the pattern of vagueness whenever a corroborating witness might be found did not help his case. The timeline of Upton’s escalating complaints was another point of contention. Cunningham laid out the sequence of events, highlighting that while Upton pursued his Christmas Eve grievance with immediate urgency—going as far as emailing colleagues at 3 AM on Christmas morning—his allegations regarding Peggie’s supposed professional misconduct, including the "resus incident," were not raised with the same urgency.
Instead, Upton appeared to have spent weeks consulting with the BMA, repeatedly requesting clarification on the process before submitting his concerns. Cunningham suggested that rather than responding to a genuine professional crisis, Upton had been stalling while he sought legal and regulatory advice on how best to frame his accusations. His insistence that he had merely been waiting for BMA input was undermined by the fact that he had already received their advice, yet continued delaying, supposedly unable to recall whether there had been further communication.
The “resus incident” itself was another major sticking point. Upton had accused Peggie of refusing to work with him during an emergency situation, implying that her “bigotry” had interfered with patient care. Yet, as Cunningham pointed out, if this had truly happened as described, it would have amounted to gross misconduct, warranting immediate suspension. Instead, Upton had waited weeks before raising it as an issue, and when questioned on why he had not escalated it earlier, he downplayed it as a mere “communications issue.”
His assertion that he had simply been “naïve” in not realising its significance did not hold up under scrutiny—especially given how aggressively he pursued the Christmas Eve confrontation, which was ultimately a matter of personal grievance rather than patient safety.
Cunningham then turned to Upton’s handling of investigatory transcripts, an area where his actions raised further doubts about his credibility. Initially, he had approved the notes taken by the investigator, AG, but later insisted they were inaccurate, requesting changes.
The crucial recordings had been deleted before Upton had approved the final version, meaning there was no way to verify his claims that key elements had been misrepresented or omitted. When challenged on why he had not disclosed this rewriting process earlier, Upton feigned ignorance, claiming it was not relevant. Cunningham suggested this was a clear attempt to conceal the fact that he had been unhappy with how his original statements were recorded, leading to the reasonable conclusion that he had actively participated in sanitising or altering the official record.
A particularly revealing moment came when Cunningham exposed the contradiction at the heart of Upton’s approach to workplace relationships. He repeatedly claimed that his complaints against Peggie were purely professional and not personal, yet his obsessive focus on being "validated" in his gender identity overshadowed all other considerations. When Cunningham pointed out that his actions had the effect of forcing female colleagues to comply with his self-perception regardless of their own discomfort or rights, Upton dismissed this as a mere matter of "respect."
The issue, however, was not one of simple politeness but of a fundamental clash between self-identification policies and the objective reality of sex-based spaces and safeguarding concerns. His refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of female colleagues’ objections spoke volumes. Cunningham then put to him that his demand for validation effectively "flattened everything in its path"—overriding the rights of others, disregarding workplace harmony, and even taking precedence over patient safety.
She highlighted that under his logic, a female colleague expressing discomfort about sharing intimate spaces with a male-bodied individual was an issue of “prejudice” rather than a reasonable expectation of female-only boundaries.
Meanwhile, the principle of maintaining trust in professional relationships—something Upton had earlier agreed was critical in a clinical setting—was suddenly less important when it came to ensuring that female colleagues could trust their working environment to be free from unnecessary conflict. The session ended with a broader question about priorities: was it more important to ensure patient safety, or to compel colleagues to affirm Upton’s gender identity against their will? While he attempted to present both as equally significant, his actions suggested otherwise.
The rapid pursuit of his grievance about being "disrespected" contrasted sharply with his slow-walked reporting of a supposed life-threatening professional failure by a colleague. If he had truly believed Peggie’s conduct in resus posed a patient safety risk, all professional standards dictated that he should have reported it immediately.
The fact that he did not—and instead treated it as a lower-level issue until much later—further suggested that his primary concern was not safeguarding but securing institutional recognition of his self-perception.
By the close of questioning, Upton’s credibility lay in ruins. His attempts to avoid precise dates, his selective amnesia when it came to crucial details, his rewriting of investigatory transcripts, and his failure to escalate a supposedly urgent safety issue all painted a picture of someone whose priorities were not patient welfare, but personal validation.
His own evasions made it abundantly clear that this case was not about professional concerns, but about control—specifically, the control over whether others were permitted to recognise and assert biological reality, or whether they would be compelled to submit to his ideological demands. The tribunal is now left with an unavoidable question: why is NHS Fife still defending him?
https://x.com/boswelltoday/status/1889658598042771565