NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #21

[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 last 2 weeks. However, after 2 weeks it was not complete and it adjourned part-heard. It is planned that it will resume on 16 July and the last day of evidence will be 28 July and then there will be 2 days of submissions from counsel meaning that the hearing will end on 30 July.

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
Thread 19: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5274571-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-19
Thread 20: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5275782-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-20

However, HMRC is only relevant for employees. No reason for a business to hold tax info on sub-contractors using staff facilities.

Again, I am sure Scottish Labour are writing a paper on all this now.

I asked someone I had regarded as a friend a similar question. 'Knowing that the toilets were empty, what would you do if you saw a ten year old girl being followed into the toilets by a middle aged man?'. 'It's really difficult!' he whined. 'It's not difficult at all' I said, but he wouldn't have it. At that point the mask slipped and I never saw him the same way again.

The term "soft law" is generally used to refer to agreements, principles and declarations that are not legally binding. Non-statutory guidance from the government is an example of soft law. Soft law can become hard law, e.g. if the government issues guidance on a subject and then decides to enforce that guidance through an Act of Parliament.

Upton said of course it should be a female. And he is a female.

TRAs have done it on here before. There is absolutely no reasoning with them. It's delusion. And I don't think they're deluded as to their sex, I think they're deluded as to how people will accept what they're saying.

but yes, it's a great question. Because it absolutely shows up what's going on.

You don't need an enrolled deed poll to change your name. For most people that is an unnecessary expense. You can simply start using your new name and, as long as you aren't using it to deceive or defraud anyone, it will become your official name by usage. If you need some documentation to back that up, you can get a statutory declaration or a change of name deed.

Agree with PP that pregnancy fear is part of it.

But I think the other part is that there is a continual, insidious message to women that they are men's possessions. It is the very fabric of most women's lives to the extent that many women can't even see it:

The obvious widespread objectifying media / ad images; the lack of proper representation on screen; the lack of historical records; ubiquitous porn; the sense that you're public property when you leave the house and have your face / body/ the way you care for your baby commented on; the fact that vast numbers of the hours women work are unpaid labour and therefore many women still rely on men for survival; when women's rights do make a political appearance it's often a tussle between the men who think they know what rights women should (and shouldn't) have; every single gain that women fought for has been appropriated by men one way or another: be that the men who still expect their full-time working wives to do the majority of labour at home or the men who colonise our single sex spaces; rape is barely prosecuted.

I don't even think the term "microaggression" covers it because that implies that there's an underlying version of society where women would be free and equal if a few people stopped their bad behaviour. But there isn't. This is our society.

@Swashbuckled interesting reading on your use of weapons! When I had a dog and we'd walk in the woods, I carried two sticks, one long and one short. The short one was of a length that, when held in a closed fist, it protruded about an inch on either side of my hand. One end also had the barb of a broken twig, a useful gouge.

I never used the short stick, though it stayed in my pocket. The long stick I used twice, once to ward off a particularly mardy dog and once to deter a teenager on a dirt bike. It worked surprisingly well both times.

That is defined in the Fraud Act. Basically, it means you are fraudulently trying to make a financial gain for yourself or someone else, or you are fraudulently trying to cause someone to suffer a financial loss.

I'm not trying to argue but surely HMRCs records would be amended to match the 'current' birth certificate, GRC passport and driving licence.

An HR dept can't exactly ask for chromosome tests to make sure the sex on paper matches the sex of the actual body.

So thinking about Dr Beth Upton and Isla Bryson, if either of them had managed to get their paperwork in order and changed birth cert at what point would it have been noticed that they were actually male?
Islas pink leggings wouldn't exactly be on the HR records?

The Government's should never have allowed birth certs to be changed.

I'm also adding airport security, imagine two women strip searching someone with female on the passport to be confronted with male genitals?

I think you could be onto something.

There is absolutely no doubt that some people are so ideologically driven, they genuinely fail to see how they appear to others.

Look at those awful women happy to call that baby a bigot. Willoughby telling women he'll go out of his way to avoid the gender neutral toilets just so he can barge into the women's. Sending rapists to women's prisoners. Lia Thomas.

All of them absolutely certain of their righteousness, and all of them hopeless misogynists who appear mad to most people.

I think one of the reasons there's been a tipping point, and it's been coming for a while, is just critical mass.

There have definitely been people who disagree profoundly with this ideology, but were too afraid to say anything. They've built up a head of steam that is now erupting.

There are obviously many more who are still afraid. Almost all the nurses, I should imagine. but as posters keep saying, the boy is yelling the emperor is naked, and people are, tentatively, after checking left and right, starting to agree out loud.

I bet it's one hell of a shock to those who still don't get it.

I hope you have their reasoning about why it's single gender and not single sex in writing.

If not, please ask them for this.

@Vegemiteandhoneyontoast

I often walk with my, very fit and active, elderly neighbour.

She takes a walking pole with her. She doesn’t need it for physical support, but takes it as a weapon. We often discuss our planned strategy, bearing in mind our pooled resources on the day .

She sounds like a great walking companion!

I'm a professional gardener and my tool bag is full of useful weapons. There's the three-pronged spiky one for dragging through soil, a serrated Japanese sickle and my latest acquisition, a hori hori knife that I keep in a sheath on my belt. Just in case, y'know.

My guess is because an HR dept can't only police with the records they have.

If the Beth's and Isla's of this world have paperwork that says they are female how can HR dept honestly say they aren't?

Birth certs and passports should never have been allowed to be changed

Either that or you descend into women having to remonstrate with presumed men to try to get them to leave

What a mess this ill though out legislation has left us with

Be kind has no place in lawmaking

It doesn't matter.

It still carries legal liability if you end up with a situation where women have been told they can't object, when you have a 'never' incident.

If everyone is told it's single sex, then if you have an incident then the company is off the hook if someone flouts that.

Thus they can demonstrate it's the actions of the individual and not the policy of the organisation.

Where might this matter?

Well on a ward, where a woman is raped, but a rape couldn't possibly have happened because it's single sex would be the extreme version.

And the reality of that position assumes that you can't tell and no one is aware of someone's trans status. If it's disclosed privately to anyone - either senior management or a colleague - then that situation ceases to exist anyway.

It matters.

Equally if you have it in writing that the company refuses to make it single sex because they can't police it, they are ultimately sueable for not upholding the law. If they are misleading staff that's not ok.

Sex markers on driving licences and passports are different and can be changed without a GRC.

However, HMRC is specifically interested in legal sex, because it can affect tax/NI/pensions. For instance, until the state pension age was equalised, a GRC affected eligibility. Therefore, if Dr Upton is an employee of the hospital and doesn't have a GRC, his tax records will show that he is male.

I agree that once somebody is granted a GRC, it's not obvious how, in practice, you exclude them on the basis of biological sex.

Again, based on recent claims, I am sure Scottish Labour has the answer.

Hello Again, Hello as Neil Diamond crooned.

I made overtures for women in their droves to appear on this livestream rather than two men croaking about the SP case, Niall is certainly open to his platform being used for this purpose....... I speak from 32 or so minutes in but the encouragement for women to make their voices heard is towards the latter end of the segment after approaching an hour.

x.com/veritasalways1/status/1891727460149948476?s=46

There was a woman on X called Henrietta who used to post regularly about her need for same sex personal care - she is bed bound. And she got the most awful trolling from trans activists. She left a few times because it was so bad. Haven't seen her posting for a while, hope she is OK.

Going back to characters in books, James Oswald had Madame Rose in his Inspector McLean books.

So the HR dept said they'll police single gender. How do they know that the internalised sense of gender of a male user is the same as that of a female user never mind 2 different female users and which sense of gender takes precedence as the defining one that excludes the other? Much simpler to stay single-sex, as well as being legal, but who am I to criticise anyone's busywork?

You can simply start using your new name and, as long as you aren't using it to deceive or defraud anyone, it will become your official name by usage.

Taking Upton at his own words, isn't what he is doing an attempt to deceive? He insists he's a woman, and could be sent to look after a real woman's intimate care unless she objects. He's made it clear he wouldn't say no he could not offer this care to the woman, long before he got near to her bedside.

"The response to the consultation is Jan 2024 or around about the time when Upton was still 'traumatised' from the Christmas Eve 2023 CR incident (if I understand this timeline correctly) and the sequelae."

That might not mean that he's not as severely traumatised as he says he was. If it's a frequent occurrence he might have special adaptive technology that allows him to type when he's crying and shaking. BE KIND.

Someone posted earlier about that study that found something like 90% of rapes occurring in changing rooms happen in mixed-sex changing rooms.

That stat is that 90% of sexual assaults in changing rooms are in mixed sex ones. There are far more sexual assaults than there are rapes.

I also wonder how she is doing. She was so brave in raising her voice about this and the abuse she got was off the scale. The thing that made me so so angry with the SNP and Nicola Sturgeon in particular was that Henrietta was blocked on twitter/X by the First Minister and her cronies at the time. They threw her to the wolves and then had the audacity to proclaim themselves feminists.

When I discovered Henrietta and found out what she was going through and how NS and SNP ministers treated her that was it for me. The callousness and contempt they displayed towards a severely disabled woman for asking for something that is legal and is her human right tipped me over the edge. Those absolute evil fuckers. I wish I could actually meet some of them and tell them this. However these are the sort of people who cruise through life immune to all criticism and will not even be giving their actions a single thought.