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

2020 is before our Upton started identifying as female, though, so I doubt it's connected, unless there's more than the name to go on?

I don't know, but she is completely out of her depth. She is no way qualified to be running anything. I suspect that the hospital was both playing lip service to DEI AND relying on her as a source of info/ advice. Who is her line manager?

No idea. In my council area it was about 40K and they were looking for two of them.

Plum salary .

with a salary of > £50k, it’s hardly an entry level job. The Trust could have employed a senior nurse, senior physio, senior dietician for that amount of money.

rest of your comment I agree with.

She has been/is very naive. However did she get recruited? that needs looking in to.

But if PP job linked is correct, she's being paid far more than an entry level nurse. It's a total waste of NHS money. It's not acceptable that someone so inexperienced should be paid so much when there aren't enough frontline nurses who need far more real skills than an EDI officer (or whatever she is).

It might have taken a long time to conclude.

Quite so. But the trouble is, Dr Upton says "I am a woman" and seems to have been permitted, encouraged even, to do so. It's not the facility that's in question, but who's allowed to use it.

Cross post and this is exactly right. If you're paid that type of money (I think the PP job ad was 40-47k) then you should know your law at the very least and shouldn't get out of any wrongdoing with an 'oh but she's so young'. At that level of pay you should have some responsibility to not be a total idiot.

How many nurses could have been employed for the money pissed up the wall on DEI?

It's not right and it's not helping patients, clearly. There were some very serious stories of failures of care at the Vic on previous threads, in some cases people were made seriously ill or died. It's NOT OK that money is pissed away on jobs like this when patients aren't getting adequate care.

Yes they could have. And the other side would have rejoiced because it would be relatively straightforward to get the evidence of their witness statement put in the bin so long as there was a decent counter narrative.

In the event NC could have applied to force them to attend. It is possible, but not certain, that she could have got an order to make this happen. However, because they'd be discrediting their own witness statement by not attending, NC would most likely be content for this state of affairs to continue.

Re Salary - I would imagine a new graduate to be at the lower £29k end of this scale, but as the practitioner post shows it's possible to earn a lot more.

No really. Looking it up at gov.uk I see:

• it was decided in Jan 2020
• in Port Talbot
• a search for Upton shows loads of cases, because it's a common name.

A bit of nitpicking about their own policies might have helped NHS Fife.

So does the DEI lead set the policies relating to that area? If not, who in an NHS like Fife is accountable, checks and signs off policy, as presumably that should indicate at the very least that they are satisfied that the policy is legally compliant (lol)

From the 'ludicrous' emails, it seems to me that the patient safety issue has been interpreted by different people in different ways.

Upton was quite clear that the safety issue arose from the inability of Sandie to 'respect' him sufficiently to work effectively.

But HR have taken it that the complaint is her bigotry would mean she wouldn't offer proper care to trans patient.

If they didn't properly understand what she was suspended for, that must be a problem.

Ridiculously high salary my god no wonder the nhs is strapped for cash, talk about priorities skewed

I don't know why but I'm thinking of those ads where the tiny kids are running the show roynd the boardroom table. Is it Santander?

I don't know about Scotland, but in our healthcare org policies like that would be signed off at director level at least, if not CEO/board level.

I do not think that she can stand up in court and say something she knows to be untrue, if he’s going to stick to the lie then he may have to represent himself, because surely no barrister is going to risk their career by saying he is a biological female.

This is the 2022 advert for the DEI role at NHS Fife. A band 7 salary is now £50-£57K. Same as a senior nurse, senior physio etc usually with >10 years experience.

Equality & Human Rights Lead Officer
The closing date for this job has now passed.
Job reference: 097600
Salary: Band 7 (£40,872 - £47,846)
Job closing date: 26/04/2022
Job Type: Administrative Services
Location: Hayfield House
Employment type: Fixed-term or Secondment
Hours Per Week: 37.5
Job posted date: 12/04/2022
Employer (NHS Board): NHS Fife
Department: Patient Relations

https://apply.jobs.scot.nhs.uk/Job/JobDetail?jobid=97941

Eternal thanks to everyone on these threads for all the info, analysis & commentary. Loved the video of Sandie arriving this morning - heartwarming!
Let's not forget others facing similar processes ahead, such as FayeRC.

From that article (my emphasis)
The health board said: “NHS Fife considers it inappropriate to comment during the employment tribunal. It is important to recognise that at the heat of this case are two employees, who should be treated with kindness and respect. As an organisation, NHS Fife remains committed to upholding its duty of care to all employees.”

My comment seems to write itself.

I don't think she wrote the policies but she was consulted as a source of expertise. But from evidence ED gave earlier in the week, ivthink she said she logged on to the internal system to find appropriate policies but didn't really know what she was looking for or which search words to use. There were various different policy documents that looked relevant. Nothing was headed up "who can use the ladies". And at some point they asked the DEI woman for her input.

Phew, all caught up! What a roller coaster that was. It really is looking like NHS Fife are properly in the shit. Just hope it leads to wider reform throughout NHS Scotland on their approach to all things trans. It should never have needed one nurse to put everything on the line to get this nonsense questioned. Roll on July.

Until we see the toxicity of Dr Upton. Then we get mad

Mad enough to make a huge donation to Sandie Peggie's crowdfunder.

Am I allowed to say that? She's going to donate it to charity. But the final amount will speak volumes. Anybody who is just thinking about it, just do it.

Let's see it go up to six figures.