NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #15

[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 once it was in to the second week it was looking like this would not happen. The hearing commenced with Sandie Peggie giving evidence. Dr Beth Upton gave evidence from Thursday 6 February to Wednesday 12 February.

Access to view the hearing remotely was obtainable by sending an email request to [email protected] headed Public Access Request (Peggie v Fife Health Board) 4104864/2024 and requesting access.

However, as a result of problems with the livestreaming, apparently, as a result of a very large number of observers, remote public access to the hearing was suspended on Tuesday 11 February. It was suggested that it might be reinstated at some point but don't count on it.

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
Thread 12: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5272276-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-12
Thread 13: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5272398-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-13
Thread 14: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5272939-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-14

Just a reminder that there is a case in England on single sex spaces which is still looking for supporters.
More info on the case is on crowd justice. Look for Faye Russell-Caldicott.
@FayeRC

Still catching up with yesterday. From thread 14:

HootyMcBoobs · Yesterday 15:14

If he's "not a man" shouldn't the judge throw the case out right now?
Because there WOULD be no discrimination if he was a woman no?
So the very fact that the case is being heard is because he is a transwoman. Transwomen are men, otherwise WHAT are they "transing" from?
Make it make sense.

I've picked one post to quote but therew have been several with similar misconveptions.

No. That's not the case being heard.

Whether DU was discriminated against is irrelevant. The case is brought by SP about whether she was bullied and unfairly suspended.

Refused him to his face, regardless of her state…

So inebriated, distressed, in shock, unconscious… it only counts if she renders herself alert enough to refuse him in the moment.

Because, as he says, everyone has the right to refuse treatment from anyone- consent is very important .

I do think we need a complete other thread on 'how a female patient asks for the legal right to a female care giver' and come up with a long list of 'ways to ask' that as a collective we submit to the NHS to find out which one would result in an actual female bearing in mind that they employ men who are convinced they are women and have had all their documentation changed to reflect that.

And what the steps would be to report or refuse that would not end up with 'aggressive' or any other subjective wordings on their notes that could be used against them to withdraw care.

This is someone with a facility for words, quick but superficial understanding, brought up in an environment where these things matter, with an unshakeable belief in his own superiority (which has probably been encouraged and enabled by all around him), completely lacking in real emotional intelligence

The glibness and facility in the way Upton reels off his schtick speaks of hours and hours (days? Weeks? Months?) of being affirmed by those around him, imho.

It seems pretty clear that he’s had a lot of therapy. There was criticism of one therapist by Judge Tinnion in the case management order - he wasn’t impressed with that person’s insistence that Upton had experienced a 'hate crime', and thought she hadn’t preserved an appropriate professional distance between what Upton told her and the facts.

@RethinkingLife * - I'd be eager to rectify this vast hole in my knowledge about the (environmental? intentional?) impact of cross-sex hormones to which DU / BU refers.*

I too had doubts about the veracity of DU's claims about 'emerging' but 'compelling' evidence. I am pretty sure that any research indicating that transwomen become more aligned with females than males in any which way, would saturate our social media feeds, and Mumsnet FWR threads.

It's plausible that taking sex hormones might affect some pituitary hormone levels; but more in the direction of 'abnormal' than a new reference range

I don't know whether DU / BU was speaking about intentional, volitional, therapeutic exposure to cross-sex hormones or unintentional, environmental exposure.

Someone more knowledgeable than me suggested I read the testimonies of (ex-)wives of transwomen, AKA transwidows. I did, and I now make the same suggestion to you!

Thanks for the insightful updates everyone. A couple of thoughts as I’ve caught up.

On the issue of requesting a female doctor or clinician in a medical setting:

1. I get why people are asking how we can ask this without getting a trans woman, but all of that is expecting average women to have any idea of the intricacies of gender identity theory. I can’t imagine my grandma knowing what a ‘cis’ woman is or ‘assigned female at birth’ means, even if we put aside the fact that expecting patients to understand such concepts means forcing them to engage in a contested belief system.
2. I don’t think one can underestimate the guts you’d have to have to refuse a trans woman doctor when you have already requested female care and you are then presented with a trans woman. It’s a direct challenge to you isn’t it? They understood your request, ignored it, presented you with a male who identifies as female and now you have to have the guts to say ‘not you’ in a way that somehow doesn’t offend. It’s absolutely insane to think that most women in that situation, knowing what happens to ‘transphobes’ would feel free to say what they really want. Plenty of women (me included) find it hard to be assertive at the best of times, let alone faced with such a direct challenge, in a setting which already had a power imbalance and when you are already vulnerable.

On the evidence and additional dates issue - I really hope that the long delay doesn’t soften the memory of how ridiculous, contradictory and non-sensical DU’s evidence was. I hope the judge has got the measure of DU and at the very least has seen he is not direct and reliable, but I worry that the long delay until the rest of the trial might make his baffling evidence less impactful. If it does though, it seems NC should had plenty of material to refer to in summing up showing he is not reliable.

DU seems to be suggesting that SP's interactions with him in A&E might lead to patient risk i.e. you need to have good communications in stressful situations and SP did not look me in the face when I talked to her.

That situation could be reversed. In some situations wouldn't DU's gender identity mental and language gymnastics act as a barrier to those around him understanding what a patient's needs were?

If he keeps referring to a male patient as she, could that cause confusion to those around him? Would this be a patient safety issue?

I was thinking about the gang that worked as his Roman army marching in on the first day or 2 - some of them were clearly quite fired up, some quite excited to be part of it, some serious and apprehensive but doing what they felt a good friend doing the right thing would do ...

I really do wonder now if any of them have properly engaged with any of the discourse, really listened to what led to all this, and had any second thoughts or doubts?

Can someone who’s good with AI and has a bit of time put together an ebook readable compilation of these threads and tribunal tweets, ideally for next week for when I’m on holiday😆

Or maybe the best author in the world could write a non fiction book on this? I would even sacrifice Strike book time (just!).Fantastical thinking a la a dear doctor perhaps?

Seriously though, I’d pay for something like that

Anyway, huge thank you to nauticant and all the TT and everyone for your extremely valuable contributions.

Donated and shared on X. Puuulll, vipers!

@NotMaroonButRaspberry I wonder about his mum and wife sitting there hearing him say that if a woman requests a female doctor he will attend unless she additionally says no to him in person. How did that make them feel? I know they are supporting him and presumably view him as a woman, but they must know not all women will agree.

Were they able to put themselves in the place of a distressed woman asking for a female doctor? Do they understand the potential for the distress to be increased just to validate upton's view of himself?

Surely there must be a way to challenge the NHS policy that allows men into female CRs. Would it need to go to Judicial Review?

I don't mean this in a flippant way, I am genuinely very worried for any vulnerable girl or woman that comes into contact with DU. He's not just a liar but a dangerous liar as we've seen from his own answers.

Ooh, I get that, but fortunately it's very rare for me. I was pleased to find, years back, that it was actually a thing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09byv6m

These threads move so fast I am still catching up on yesterday afternoon’s testimony. I’ve reached NC drawing out of BU that shift changes would not have been sufficient, an apology was required. I am struck by how the painstaking, behind the scenes work of Whittle, Press for Change etc has been torpedoed by this case. They lobbied to break the social contract, to upend reality and credulous MPs went along with it, enacting unreality. Like opening Pandora’s box, those legal changes emboldened a whole host of males, not just the sad, unhappy ones. The coercive controllers, the predators, the fetishists and sexually motivated, the male supremacist types, the ones who enjoy sticking it to women in their workplace. It’s a broad, diverse coalition. There is literally no way to police the boundaries of a claimed, subjective identity. Other protected beliefs are constrained. My Muslim colleague cannot mandate that I wear a hijab at work for their comfort, or my vegan colleague that I do not eat meat in their presence. This case is FAFO writ large.

@shortshrift I think the J's comments about only if the respondent agrees we're in respect of which order the next witnesses were called in.

If NC wants more docs that appear not to have been disclosed she will ask JR in the first instance and if there is no agreement, will make an application to J for an order. I don't think it's too late for this at all given that final hearing dates will now not be until July.

That's a very apt and fascinating article!
Thanks Slackjawed!

Yes It would be good to come up with a way we can legally ask for a female (born at birth) care giver, that won’t get us in to trouble.

If we are able to choose a care giver, how do find out which of them is trans? For doctors, the GMC Register currently shows gender (Upton is recorded as female), so looking there is no help.

The GMC said in their reply to Baroness Nicholson’s letter that they create a new record for any doctor who changes name (as most transitioners do), and internally they keep a record of the connection between the old record and the new record, “for administrative and regulatory purposes, and access is limited to the few staff that require it”.

in other words, they are keeping it a secret from patients. 🙈

I’m not sure I understand.
i thought there was only 1 Datix about the “hate incident” on 24/12/23.

The claims about patient care came later. As far as I remember no one submitted a Datix for those - not least because the patient/incident couldn’t be identified. DU was too vague. Amazing that this was taken so seriously in relation to DU’s upset on the back of such flimsy information. But then not seriously at all in relation to clinical care… That was NC’s point - well made!

Go to read DU’s evidence on TT. After all the big claims when JR - his own barrister - takes him through it, it sounded like a nothingburger or a bit of workplace friction or DU’s wounded pride. It didn’t make sense at the time. But once set in the context of NC’s narrative DU was into damage control trying to save his career - due to the seriousness of his accusations now coming back towards himself.

Without understanding DU’s motive to protect the role play, it’s all hurt feelings and random events - none of the NHS staff had a full picture (unlike NC does now) so they couldn’t understand what was happening. And so would believe DU when they said “why would I make that up?”

Having gone through a lot of evidence it seemed pretty clear that DU had a lot to lose and so had to make the convo on Xmas eve seem as bad as possible to get SP out of the way.

No doubt KS will be asked to account for what reporting happened about the clinical accusations.

i wonder how KS is feeling - she probably knew the tribunal was on and wondering about it. Then 2 days ago is summoned as a witness. Then yesterday named as respondent. It will be a long drive across Fife for her this morning. If I were her I’d be bricking it

I've just planted some brassicas for you @FayeRC , good luck!

If anyone else can manage some mid month gardening, remember Sandie needs our support, but Faye also needs her legal fees!

I've thought about this a lot.

I am no wallflower. I suspect many people find me quite irritating - I'm the one who always has a question at the end of a talk, always emails the school back, happily tells off the kids in the park while my own DC cringe etc

I'm assertive, confident and don't care much what other people think of me

I'm also a hcp with 25 years of NHS service.

But when I have been very ill and vulnerable, I have found myself completely unable to advocate for myself. I have put up with substandard care, nodded along to things I don't agree with in appointments and left completely unsatisfied or confused about the next steps or plan. I found myself unable to speak up and articulate my wants, needs or concerns.

I just can't believe that there is even a suggestion that vulnerable women are expected to repeat and nuance their consent over and over again when in the situation of their request for same sex care being blatantly overridden. If she doesn't speak up enough times with a detailed enough explanation (using approved terms) then tough luck. Revolting.

I must admit, in the press of the last 2 weeks, I'd forgotten about Pollock, the Pink Therapy-accredited counsellor.

https://pinktherapy.org/about-us/

https://counsellinginnorthumberland.com/2019/08/12/crossing-the-finish-line/

However, as you indicate, the Pollock reports seem to have been treated appropriately by J Tinnion.
https://sex-matters.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Redacted-Peggie-Case-Management-Order-06.01.2025.pdf