NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #17

[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. However, it is going to overrun and there will be an adjournment with the hearing resuming in July (current best estimate). 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 caused by 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
Thread 15: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5273119-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-15
Thread 16: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5273636-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-16

As I said, the Scottish NHS is drowning in this shite.

Even the televised programme about the ambulance service shows it. Some (clearly female) paramedic was making a big song and dance about "coming out" as "non-binary" cheered on by the other rainbow lanyard wearing wanks in the NHS.
As if patients give a flying fuck about their oh-so-speshul identity.
There is NO place for identity politics in the NHS.

Your trust isn't covered for various liability if it's not working within the Equality Act.

It's leaving you, personally, potentially responsible.

It could be you up in that court room defending this nonsense in the future.

I wonder when the penny with drop with the thousands of junior female staff in companies and organisations like the NHS who happily play along with this as if it doesn't matter.

That bus could roll over you whilst those CEOs etc sit there quietly hoping it'll go away quickly.

Holy heck! Radio Forth just called Beth Upton a man! OK it was in a quote from Sandie P but nobody else has used the M word, I'm shook 😁

Probably a stern word and police if it continued. Potentially banned from that ward but that’s not made public to staff like SP.

NHS culture is reactive rather than preventative.

Well, that paramedic has just rendered themself unsackable, because that would be discrimination, of course.

I can’t wait for AI Doctors to take over then, think I’ll have FAR more confidence rather than a ‘captured’ witch finder general!

Item in BBC Scotland about struggling to recruit nurses.

I bet this has not helped! Following item back to this case.

But it turns out post interviews and books by his daughter, that James/Jan was exactly the same as the rest.

There's thousands of female workers in the NHS who need to start saying no rather than just hoping it happens to someone else first.

@Hoardasurass you have personal experience with our Shero?

Yes, it’s always seen as too difficult and the overwhelming raison d’etre is to ‘be inclusive’, but only to people wearing rainbow badges.

The female population can just fuck off, be quiet, and be kind.🙄

The obs thing is ridiculous. If obs need doing, they need doing. It's important for patient safety and any competent clinician should be able and willing to do them. I'm happy to do obs. I'm a consultant. Never mind big gendered pants, someone needs to put on a pair of "I'm at work" pants and prioritise patient care over ego.

You're shook?

The Scottish Daily Express is showing genuine leadership and (intentionally, inadvertently) showing up other MSM.

www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/comment/scottish-express-referring-dr-beth-34670335?int_source=nba

I no longer have a grasp on the world in which I live. Arendt warned about this state in her lectures and books.

"Totalitarianism destroys man’s ability to think, while turning each in his lonely isolation against all others"

Totalitarian movements use ideology to isolate individuals. Isolate means ‘to cause a person to be or remain alone or apart from others’. Arendt spends the first part of ‘Ideology and Terror’ breaking down the ‘recipes of ideologies’ into their basic ingredients to show how this is done:

ideologies are divorced from the world of lived experience, and foreclose the possibility of new experience;
ideologies are concerned with controlling and predicting the tide of history;
ideologies do not explain what is, they explain what becomes;
ideologies rely on logical procedures in thinking that are divorced from reality;
ideological thinking insists upon a ‘truer reality’, that is concealed behind the world of perceptible things.

The way we think about the world affects the relationships we have with others and ourselves. By injecting a secret meaning into every event and experience, ideological movements are forced to change reality in accordance with their claims once they come to power. And this means that one can no longer trust the reality of one’s own lived experiences in the world. Instead, one is taught to distrust oneself and others, and to always rely upon the ideology of the movement, which must be right.

aeon.co/essays/for-hannah-arendt-totalitarianism-is-rooted-in-loneliness

I think they were saying they needed an expert to explain what sex is rather than what anyone’s actual sex is. Lord Winston is the name everyone on the thread is proposing.

https://www.nhslanarkshire.scot.nhs.uk/pulse-latest-discounts-from-nhs-staff-benefits-133/

Offering deals to NHS staff staying at Trump’s Turnberry Resort.

Yes though embarrassingly I didn't realise until I saw her picture. But honestly she is one of the nicest nurses I've ever met (I've unfortunately met many over the years), she's professional and has a bedside maner that puts you at ease. I wish we could clone her so all patients could benefit from her care

I'm fairly sure my hourly rate is lower that Lord Winston's. I'd be more than happy to step in and call a spade a spade (even if the spade is wearing a dress).

The whole NHS not just Scotland I think.

The one o’clock news had a segment from the Royal Free and they have that ludicrous pride progress flag flying outside

Posters who've been around since it was all fields here…are you pining for @Bowlofbabelfish amidst the nonsense we've been through with this ET?

Great piece by academic Kathleen Stock (mentions MN)
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3289890-great-piece-by-academic-kathleen-stock-mentions-mn?reply=79000762&utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

I know this isn't the point of the tribunal but on the blood results thing... having lurked on the transgenderuk reddit, I think many trans people genuinely believe that taking cross-sex hormones changes your blood profile (liver function? kidney function? etc) and therefore you are 'haematologically cross-sex'.

I don't know if the Gender Clinics do it deliberately, but in encouraging their patients to ask to change their health record gender marker, they are playing into this fallacy - I had assumed they understood that this made a mess of blood test interpretation (other than cross-sex hormone ranges which is all they are interested in), but now I am beginning to wonder if they are also deluded in this respect too. Didn't DU say something along these lines yesterday? It makes me think we should be exploring patient understanding of the implications of gender marker change even more deeply than with we (I) already do.

A (scottish) list of tests with sex-specific ranges below. They get themselves into a tangle over sex and gender but despite that the message is clear:
apps.nhslothian.scot/files/sites/2/Gender-specific-reference-ranges-for-blood-tests.pdf

In order to be covered by the Trusts vicarious liability I have to follow their policies. I have challenged them and will continue to do so.

Your trust isn't covered for various liability if it's not working within the Equality Act.
It's leaving you, personally, potentially responsible.
It could be you up in that court room defending this nonsense in the future.

I think there may be some confusion here between (a) vicarious liability ie an employer having liability to a third party for the acts of its employee in the course of employment and (b) the terms of any insurance the employer may have to cover itself and its employees for whom it may be vicariously liable.

Whether the employer is covered by insurance for acts (its own or those of its employees) which do not comply with the Equality Act depends on the terms of the policy.

Time for West Streeting to step in and point out the law to NHS trusts. I guess he may be waiting for the result of the For Women Scotland appeal to the Supreme Court. Hearing was last November so we could be waiting a good few months longer. Meanwhile everyone seems to agree that without a GRC there are just 2 sexes.

Oh I do miss Bowlofbabelfish!

Oh wow, that was definitely framed as her being such a fangirl of the Orange Twat that she even stayed at one of his hotels!

This is fantastically misleading & I note it's one of the things the BBC picked up on.

@CriticalCondition

Is it true that any trust who are operating against / outside the law would not actually have liability cover?

I know with doctors as soon as something illegal happens there liability cover ceases. Ie. doctors who practice without a licence to practice currently held by the GMC then lose their indemnity / liability insurance.

Is it similar?