NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #22

[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
Thread 21: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5276925-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-21

Continuation thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5285690-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-23

Thanks @nauticant 👍🏻👏🏻🙏🏻😘

Yes, thanks for the new thread, thank goodness it's slowed down a bit, I couldn't keep up!

No worries, I could make my points more clearly. I find it brain-melting to discuss law and policy and medical practice that treats nonsense as if it is real.

It just all boils down to the GRC ultimately. No male should be able to legally be a woman.

What a man chooses to wear and his preferences with regards to his 'gender identity' should be irrelevant to women's sex based provision (which should equally have nothing to do with gender).

So It should be possible to protect women's sex based rights without infringing on a male persons belief that they are woman gender.

100% what has gone wrong is the conflation of sex and gender in law.

That is what we are seeing played out time and time again.

Take the GRC away and I think most of this will fall off.

Take the GRC away and I think most of this will fall off.

I couldn't agree more, but realistically, I think we are a million miles away from that happening. It would be such a sea-change, and, as I've remarked before, the international aspect doesn't help. Many countries now have similar legislation (some, it seems, much worse than the UK).

IIRC after this exchange SP said something along the lines of 'it's not surprising none of them took it further given what happened to me'

I remember thinking 'yes, you'd have to be mad to go to management after what happened to Sandie'. Let's not forget at the time NHS management clearly thought they could get away with destroying her career, calling her names and making false accusations of harassment and professional misconduct with no consequence. Just because she asked about her legal right to a single sex space.

It reminds me of McCarthyism.

People working in that system are almost certainly from what was on display in the tribunal used to a totally one-sided, captured, abusive, toxic environment. They probably had no clue how this court case would go and therefore were unwilling to step up for fear that the same thing would happen to them.

Recent photo of him according to Twitter

A possible approach, given the framework of conflicting rights that the EA tried, but failed, to set up, would be to grant GRCs but make it a crime for the holder, as a trans sexual person, to use his status to enter spaces reserved for born women, and perhaps to do other things I haven't thought of. They could have their GRC for daily life but it would be illegal to rely on it for defined purposes.

This post nails it. Simple, logical and reasonable.

Why isn't this the norm anyway?

100% what has gone wrong is the conflation of sex and gender in law.

The problem is that gender and sex used to mean the same thing.

As in "the gender pay gap" meaning the gap in pay between men and women.

The Gender Recognition Act was intended to recognise a change of sex in law, hence Section 9 - "(1)Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman)."

Changing the meaning of 'gender' in law to something akin to religion and belief in equality legislation, and not the same meaning as 'sex', thus abolishing "legal sex", will take a lot of doing, IMO.

Oh…goodness. Well, I imagine he might peak a few people. How do we make sure the Darlington tribunal gets as much media attention as this one?

Recent photo of him according to Twitter

I thought that was pre "transition" Upton for a minute, see his Dundee university photo. There's definitely a type, isn't there!

Does anyone know who the legal team are for the Darlington nurses? I don’t hear any mention of it from the Legal Feminist team, so presumably it’s not NC or similar.
it’s kind of important that whoever they are is someone top flight, not a well-meaning but not so well equipped lawyer who could be taken apart in the tribunal.

SP was fortunate to have been put in touch with Maya Forstater, and subsequently Legal Feminist and NC, by her MP Neale Hanvey. I don’t think the Darlington nurses got help like that.

They’re represented by lawyers from Christian Legal Centre:

christianconcern.com/cccases/darlington-nurses/

Thank you.

I can completely understand why the Darlington Nurses have gone with this organisation to represent them, since they were refused support by the RCN, and this organisation offered help. But have done a bit research this morning and am uneasy about how this might affect chances of success in the Tribunal. IANL, so might have got it wrong.

Christian Legal Centre is a ‘sister organisation’ to Christian Cencern, it is set up as a limited company with two directors, one of whom, Miss Claire Rebecca Hunt, is a barrister in her early fifties. Their webpage shows half a dozen cases, some successful, others not. Wikipedia lists more cases, fewer of which have successful outcomes.

Their underpinning ethos promotes Christianity and the teachings of Jesus. Wikipedia (if it can believed) says they oppose homosexuality, same-sex marriage, pre-marital sex, and porn. suggests it is modelled on evangelical US legal organisations. One of the cases described on Wikipedia was about objecting to the withdrawal of life support for a brain-dead child, and they have waded in to the abortion debate, opposing late abortions. So quite a wide set of ethical dilemmas.

if they bring these views into play in the Darlington Nurses Tribunal, I can’t think it will help. Some of the views are controversial, not as widely supported as the same sex spaces issue the Tribunal is about, and are already settled in law (e.g. same-sex marriage). They have the potential to distract and get the whole case thrown out. We have seen the central issue of the SP case has had a laser like focus on from NC and her team, and the Darlington Nurses case is going to need that too IMHO.

I’d like someone knowledgable to tell me I’ve weighed this up wrong and it will all be all right, please.

I think this is the same team that recently won an appeal for Kristie Higgs.
https://christianconcern.com/cccases/kristie-higgs/

Yes, that one is featured on their website.

Fife's barrister tried to drag in views supporting Trump in the Sandie Peggie case but I don't think that got much traction

Provided the lawyers in the Darlington nurses' case keep strictly to the relevant legislation, would the other side trying to drag in irrelevant matters have any effect?

It shouldn't. The tribunal should ignore anything that isn't relevant to the issues. Cases CLC has been involved in previously are definitely not relevant.

@Bunpea, I agree, the optics are tricky with the Darlington tribunal. But they teetered on the edge of tricky with Sandie and her supposed love of Trump.

I would love if everyone supporting the women who are pushed out of their spaces were super-educated left-wing feminists (because otherwise they get dismissed as “just a bunch of right wing bigots”) but let’s face it, a lot of the super-educated left-wing feminists support the TRAs. I don’t like that the Daily Mail reported on Sandie’s tribunal more accurately than the BBC, but here we are.

All sunlight is good sunlight, and I just hope that eventually the increasing mass of resistance to TI will be enough that those on the left who tend to gently agree with us terfs but are afraid to be seen as “Trump supporters” or whatever, will see that this is in fact a bipartisan issue, not a left/right one.

Also, the Darlington nurses have Wes Streeting on their side - openly gay, very Labour, etc.

edited to add: cross post with a bunch of PPs!

It is the Darlington Nurses’ barrister (not the Trust’s barrister - no idea who that is) who has a wider set of views, that I am concerned should be brought into play.

e.g. CLC are opposed to pre-marital sex. This is irrelevant to the Nurses’ case. But Rose has stated he is trying to get his girlfriend pregnant (so not taking female hormones), so at odds with the Nurses’ barrister’s views on pre-marital sex.

Why is ok for the NHS Trust to pay the legal bills for one side and not for the other if they are supposed to treat all employees equally?

Also does this not make the Trust biased against one set of employees.

Ooops, sorry, typo….….it should read “that I am nocerned should NOT be brought in to play.”

Interesting challenge. It looks as if the Trust explicitly supports one side or employee. Presumably the Trust feels the nurses are in breach of policy.

We may be better informed as to their thinking in a few months.