NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #19

[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, after 2 weeks it was not complete and it adjourned part-heard. It seems that it will resume on 16 July and the last day of evidence will be 28 July but it wasn't completely clear whether it might end a day or two later.

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
Thread 17: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5273827-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-17
Thread 18: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5274332-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-18

@Violetparis Channel your inner sandie and mention it now. You just express concern that this may lead to further legal cases and (reword this) that colleagues need to be encouraged to consider their colleagues feelings regardless of legal rights.

Or even just a pink hairband because a beard = bandwidth

I noticed her not knowing, but going from that to "too posh" is a bit of a leap! My first thought was to wonder how old she is. I think of her as being about my age, and I only remember watching Rainbow when it was on for my little brother. Looking it up, it started in 1972, which fits. Maybe she's a lot younger though, despite the white hair? Her outertemple.com page says she was called in 1994, but I have no idea how to go from that to her likely birth year.

I deliberately tried to strip out both the male vs female and reality-based vs identity-based aspects of my hypothetical conflict.

So the answer is that there is a standard existing procedure that would be applied.

Raising yet again the question of why the standard existing procedure wasn't followed in this case.

yes yes, I know. But just wondering. Hypothetically.

Interesting! Based on your experience, what’s the peak ages group for extremist trans ideology?

That’s very funny. Especially as it perfectly reflects the condescending, superficial, glib discourse we have seen so recently in court.

I suspect JR will be bringing up the "sandie could have used the official changing room" line. It shouldnt wash with the tribunal as that would be a detriment compared to other women and would clearly be on the basis of her views about sex change. Upton's appropriate comparator is another man, so no detriment in asking him to use the official room.

As Sandi was allowed back to work the "investigation" seems to have been concluded, although there doesnt ever seem to have been a formal notification of that. The documents relating to her return to work might be revealing.

edit for poor typing

I’ve had a look at a 2022 NHS Fife advert for what I think must be the role they recruited IB for. Assuming this is indeed that role, something deffo went wrong with their recruitment process. ^https://apply.jobs.scot.nhs.uk/Job/JobDetail?jobid=97941&source=JobtrainRss^

The job description has v short and clear Job Purpose, very heavy indeed on understanding the legislation in this area and keeping the Board out of trouble. Here it is in its entirety :

“The post holder will lead on mainstreaming the organisation’s approach to equality and human rights.

The post holder is responsible for ensuring the Board is sighted on the legislative requirements of the Equality and Human Rights agenda and is responsible for leading on the delivery of these agendas.

The post-holder will be a subject matter expert and lead on the interpretation of and compliance with the Equality Act 2010, the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 and the Human Rights Manager.
The post holder will support the Patient Relations Manager to meet local and national objectives for Participation and Engagement, Volunteering and Advocacy.”

But the Person Specification for the job doesn’t match.
It is far too woolly, long unfocused list of imprecise essential skills, no qualification or quantification of the experience required.
Basically it just says they want any graduate or equivalent.
Looks like it’s written by someone else, who has not understood the Job Purpose.

On the basis of the person spec, it’s not surprising they managed to recruit IB.

As Dr Upton's supervisor, it might have been prudent for KS to strongly encourage him time off and occ health support after noting his distress at a woman expressing her discomfort with him being in the women's changing room and finding out that he had been keeping 'contemporaneous notes' of colleagues' behaviour at work. This is not normal behaviour and potentially a distraction from patient care. Rather than bending over backwards to placate him and immediately accepting his account without even asking SP. In a way, he has been massively let down by NHS Fife too because they have enabled him to prioritise his obsessive beliefs at work to the point where he is in all the papers having his bonkers beliefs exposed as the nonsense they are and his fitness to practise questioned by the public. How dare NHS Fife bleat about duty of care to two employees when they have spectactularly failed them both.

As there's so many newly peaked following these threads, I thought it might be a good idea to post the following links. Not for this case but more generally in case you're interested -

How to make a FOI request -
https://www.gov.uk/make-a-freedom-of-information-request

How to find out your elected representatives voting record -
www.theyworkforyou.com

How to contact your elected representatives -
www.writetothem.com

Is it a tip to far right?

Or a frustration with woo replacing common sense?
And an electorate who hate spin and being lied to and abuses of power to cover up failings?
And an inability to tackle every day on the ground problems and instead a middle management preference for virtue signalling which hides real problems because 'im alright jack'?

Go and talk to people about why Trump and Farage are hitting home. It's because they are cutting through this bullshit.

I don't think people are fully signed up to 'the right' as people think. I do think there are years of deeply ingrained senses of injustice and not being listened to though.

What has surprised me when talking to people who say they support Trump and Farage is they aren't so far removed from the biggest Anti Trump/ Anti Farage concerns at ground level as people perhaps want to believe.

They are just looking for someone to bring change in many cases because they feel there's something so fundamentally wrong with the status quo.

Once you see that, it's the basis of consensus building in the middle. But currently no one is really doing this. It's a gap in politics. It's a space the LDs were inhabiting (and arguably do to an extent better at local level - hence why they traditionally do better at local level).

One of the political trends at the moment is for independent local representation.

Strangely Labours latest move is for 'super councils'. An example is the proposed merger of Warrington with Cheshire East and other parts of the surrounding. Why? Well it hasn't gone unnoticed that this tends to work against independent local representation and in the favour of established political parties... It's another move away from grassrootism.

This digresses substantially from the subject of this thread but I do think it's something that we need to reflect on and think about because many of these issues have actually come up in the course of this case as side issues.

And of course it has ramifications for grass roots feminism on a broader level - regardless of which way we go towards longer term (Faragism or Progressivism).

In both directions lie the potential for more authoritarianism and less power and influence for women. We ignore this at our peril.

I wonder if this will come up in court? If your employer's training is incorrect, but you follow it, who in the hierarchy is responsible?

Not a lot has made me chuckle through this...
But I keep having an image of a group of TRAs watching DU evidence, edge of seats, waiting to burst into cheers and raptures of applause, "GO U" then out comes the 'biological sex is a nebulous dog whistle...'

Cue lots of W.T.A.F. ....

What would be the best course of action?

To ask Sex Matters to send a letter along these lines? And follow process from there, requesting a review much later down the line, if necessary?

For those on TwiX, there’s an excellent post + subsequent thoughtful discussion about the case . Julie Hull is the original poster - Julie, if you’re on here, thank you; a great analysis 👏👏

Link here

That's a really good question.

There are so many bits in this case. It really is going to be spoken about for decades.

Sorry about the formatting..I’ve tried to edit out the big gap, but failed!

Well, if it wasn't for Dr Upton's bonkers beliefs being exposed, I'd still Be Kind!

I have to thank NHS Fife for opening my eyes to all of this.

Agree with every word of this.

I should add that voting trends since 1997 have gone from people voting FOR a positive change in what they thought Blair represented to them increasingly voting for what they think is the least worst option and actively AGAINST the alternative.

Labour's victory at the last election was particularly true of this and it actually surprised a lot of Labour Big Wigs and it's causing concern. They had a huge landslide in terms of the number of seats but this doesn't reflect the actual votes.

They got in by a whisker in reality - they got votes in the right places, but not with much margin of error in huge numbers of those seats - and it leaves them with little room for movement at a time of public dissatisfaction. It's hard to see where they can gain seats from here as usually an incumbent government loses a few in its second term. It's really a question of loosing as few as possible. They can't afford much of a swing away from them in any direction.

Reform also didn't stand at the last election. That's a huge worry. Labour suffered hugely with the UKIP vote. It hits their 'safe seats' in the north particularly hard.

I know my constituencies and I have something of a demographic map in my head that I can visualise pretty well before I look at actual numbers after many years of looking at them.

Darlington is in interesting choice for Streeting to make a stand for these reasons.

It's NOT merely a coincidence.

Does a forensic search show up deleted things? I know sometimes deleted things can get retrieved on a computer but not sure about a phone.

Well, her mother must have been born in the 1920s to have worked at Bletchley during the war, so I'd be surprised if NC was younger than mid to late 50s.

Yes, I've wondered how many of his supporters listened to him thinking "oh my God, I didn't realise this was what Theodore actually believed. I thought he just wanted to dress up and that seemed harmless enough. I tuned out when he went on his long speils and just assumed he didn't think he had literally changed sex."

Thank you. That's so powerful - and accurate.

NC was born Oct 1966 per Companies House records.