NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #25

[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
Thread 22: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5280174-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-22
Thread 23: 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
Thread 24: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5301295-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-24

I have a horrible feeling we might have to wait until tomorrow morning to see the judgement.

Judge Kemp there was a "concern" that during previous coverage, comments were written "not by a witness or participant, but another observer".

Above is from the BBC article today. I can't work out what it means by comments written by another observer.

This was in connection with the objection to TT

Did we peak too soon re TT.

Great news.

I seem to remember that there was an hour or two when the Tribunal room tech was so appallingly bad that TT couldn’t get access, but some responsible people provided some coverage.

I might be confusing this with the FWS case.

It is a bit of whataboutery from the health board who have been ignoring, and still continue to ignore, HSE legislation about single sex changing facilities.

As I read that, a journalist would count as "not ... a witness or participant, but another observer".

There's some considerable reaching going on that members of the public watching court proceedings and discussing them is somehow illegitimate.

Is the BBC actually not capable of covering challenges against gender ideology in a way that informs the public?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1w3q195zpjo.amp

This paragraph has now been removed from the BBC article

From the end of the BBC article.

The judge said that the tribunal could revoke access if the conditions were breached again.

Did a previous thread mention that some interruptions seemed deliberate for this purpose?

That's TWO t-shirts please, one of each, size M please😂

It's great news about public access to the tribunal, and makes NHS Fife look like they've something to hide ..surely not!🙃

They had better sort the tech out then, so as to minimise the chance of “interruptions”.

NHS Fife’s attempt to shut the tribunal down to observers doesn’t make them look good. What twerps.

I’ve lost track. When are we due back at tribunal for this?

Yes, it appeared that some people were using the live stream to try to disrupt proceedings by turning their microphones on and making a lot of noise. However, without the actual judgement, we don't know if the judge was referring to that, or some alleged unfairness or inaccuracy in TT's coverage, or something else. The way the BBC article is worded suggests that comment may have been aimed at TT, but we don't know.

I like the way the BBC added:

The incidents alleged by Dr Upton happened before the UK supreme court unanimously ruled that a woman is defined by biological sex under equalities law.

Which is of course true BUT the law was still the same then as it is now and ignorance of the law is not a defence in a court of law 😁

I wonder if the judge was referring to Michael Foran who took over tweeting when the live stream was down.

Do we know the outcome of the disclosure, adding Kate Searle and the phone?

16th July

Meanwhile, Tribunal Tweets were also granted access to report on live proceedings, provided they were fair and accurate.

NHS Fife had asked for the group to be banned from covering the case due to a public complaint.

Are the details of the claims that NHS Fife were making ever released to the public? A 'public complaint' seems pretty woolly language

Public complaint & request to prevent TT access = 1

Public Requests for open justice and TT access = about 600

I don’t suppose it took much thinking about. Must be pretty unusual for the tribunal to have 600 interested parties writing about anything at all 🤣

Wow just reading about demands to shut down access to viewing and tweets.

Tg it was denied. Incredible.

So live stream viewing will be available as well as Tribunal tweets? I hope the technical issues will be sorted.

Interesting in the BBC article that they've managed to use an in-focus image of Sandie, but a soft focus image of Beth. Curious, neh?

Well done TT!
Do we think this means an announcement is also due this week on the phone records and 3rd respondent?

I’m particularly looking forward to hearing the DEI lead explain their policies whilst Naomi compares them, line by line, to the actual law!

Getting the popcorn in right now.

https://www.nhsfife.org/news-updates/latest-news/2025/04/comment-sought-on-tribunal-tweets-and-online-public-access-during-tribunal-hearing/