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

Another lurker here. Finding it hard to keep up as it is and posting would just cause my blood pressure to go through the roof.

There are men here, several have posted.

(Not me, I’m a woman. Although I don’t wear skirts or make-up and I’ve got short hair. Who can tell, really! I’m not an expert! It’s all so confusing!)

I've had to suspend people before and have always had to invite them in writing with the offer of a staff or union member and always had to tell them in advance that the investigation is looking at X and could potentially result in Y.

Then at the actual meeting, another letter confirming, the suspension and all the above, again. And that they will be called to another meeting to go through the evidence and give their side of the situation.

If this is their very first suspension then HR legal should really have been advising on the process. Not leaving it to a DEI bod to advise. I find this quite unfathomable.

w/out going back
NC Clear is more info re this datex

ED I dont know w/out looking

NC U recall is at least one more field

ED There's New Notes field. Yr asking me about something a long time ago and I wasnt the IX officer

ED ANy incident is recorded. Not just safety and B&H.

NC Once netered u can add more info later

Yes

NC Can u delete info

ED I dont think so

NC You imagine it wld be locked down and can't change info

ED I've only ever added info

NC Can u change info

ED I dont know

What follows is all opinion and conjecture:
ED reaching for "I wouldn't know, I'm just a nurse" as an answer reminds me of the way nurses will say this to a consultant in a passive aggressive way, if they're not confident enough to assert, "I haven't got time to do your legwork for you". I think NC was right to pick up on ED lacking confidence to speak directly and bluntly to consultants. And I think she's right to seek to add KS as a respondent - I think KS didn't ever recognise ED's passive aggressive way of communicating with her and thought ED was a walkover who would give KS the Ix outcome KS wanted. When it became clear ED wasn't going to do this - though her way of resisting was always indirect - KS found someone else to run the Ix.
This is pure speculation on my part but it fits some puzzle pieces together for me.

I’m lurking too, what’s interesting to me is we had a big recruitment drive at work recently and my manager (a blonde, white, heterosexual man) has drawn the short straw and had to fire a couple of people because they weren’t working when they should have been, or lied about their experience and couldn’t do the job, and without fail every time he’s had an allegation put in from the person who’s been fired that he was racist/sexist/homophobic and every time he’s had to go through a pointless investigation and even though he knows he’s done nothing wrong and the company has his back the process is still really stressful, so I can only imagine how stressful it must be for Sandie not knowing what allegation will come next or if she’ll be believed.

The process truly is the punishment!

And ED managed to not see SP for 2 months to feedback re CR issue....

@nauticant maybe when we get to the end of the week, Mumsnet might be able to give you the stats on how many individual users were on each thread? And also how many across all 18 or 19?
And how that fares against the average weekday working hours thread traffic?

I love how we are now in the land of Minority Report 2.

Moving on from the 2002 Film of the same name ED and Upton have cast themselves as precogs and have seen the future where Sandie is a paid up Far Right Agent set to murder all trans patients through weaponised tactical hovering in the wrong place at the wrong time, posting on Facebook and asking difficult questions to a nurse about DNA and biological sex

Thus Sandie had to be punished.

Can't wait until the movie comes out.

Are you a robot tho?

Woah, just scrolling back up in the break. The number of posters who agreed with my post about getting the chills at the thought of DU in anaesthetics is huge. 😕

ED These rotas are very complex. wks in advance to work out^
NC KS seems to think this was feasible. See her email of 30 Dec: [reads re not having same shifts and KS thinks she's sorted]
ED KS has no responsibility for med rostas nor nursing

NC She's making it up?
ED SHe has no responsibility. U need to ask Kate
NC If real concern was keeping them apart, even if tricky step 1 was to look at rota and maybe put SP on leave for a shift or 2
ED Was to protect both staff and patients and keep them separate. Was a bigtask
NC Yr really saying took til April to sort this
ED Also needing to protect all mwmbers and witnesses
NC What mmade her return work
ED Beth moved to anaesthetics so we changed her shifts
NC If just a practical problem to separate them, is much less drastic

Can I just say, I really don't want "Beth" watching me while I'm unconscious . . .

NC [reads re SX record we received last Friday.. reads re SX letter] It doesnt mention patient safety records?

ED It's my handwriting

NC U were asked yday in evidence in chief and u chose B&H as reason to suspend

ED Yes

NC You chose that? [lists other potentials]

ED Yes

NC

I believe ED said she wouldn't put herself in a situation here she was uncomfortable which seemed very much to her blaming Sandie for not agreeing to move to another CR

Someone's had a word, or she's read TT from previous days.

NC [reads re Susp risk assessment]

ED Not sure if I completed it, tho remember seeing it. Might have been Lottie

NC That records under background, brief details of incident.

No mention of derog words but not accepting DU being female

Same here.

I think her specific words were "i wouldn't put myself in that situation" which was either just indicating generic discomfort or a Freudian slip

That is one hypothesis.
Another is that they were quietly bungling along and then - wham - SP's solicitor's letter arrives and ED gets some heat. The management realise ED is a witness and shouldn't have been involved in interviews.... they quickly change tack and get someone else to run the IX. Which would be an admission they bodged it and the suspension was illegal

NC could allege either of those, or other alternatives in the closing arguments. We will need to wait and see

NC Two lines from statement [reads out above] Tells us in yr mind you werent troubled about manner of SP talking but Beth..

ED I didnt write it

NC This is note from SX mtg

ED I've seen this part - these fields. I cant recall seeing the background

Would a DNA test help?

Or just close your eyes, take a deep breath sense your inner feelz, if they are lady feelz then a lady you are. It's very simple really if you embrace the nebulous nature of sex.

I bloody love when the lurkers give us waves.

It makes me think of the bit in the last Harry Potter book when the students stand in rows in front of Harry to protect him from being handed over to Voldemort.

I'd watch it ❤

👋 I'm lurking reading along too.

As an NHS Scotland employee of over 20 years I'm not at all surprised at the HR mess!

HR write the policies and then are very hands off, leaving everything up to individual managers (who are mainly clinicians) and don't have the relevant background and skills. As we are seeing!

NC [reads re SP feeling rubbish] It's obvious it's from IX mtg

ED Lottie wrote it

J Is this not a later mtg?

NC I'm sorry, it's a different mtg

NC U were present and decided to SX on 3 Jan

Yes

NC On 3rd Feb decided to extend SX

Yes