NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #26

[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 doubtful whether pubilc access for remote viewing would be reinstated but recent developments (as of mid May) suggest that this might actually become available again.

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
Thread 25: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5318518-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-25

I actually agree with dwimmer to a certain extent here. The way that prh47bridge presents points - which do have the benefit of genuine legal knowledge behind them - I do often find is done in a way with such authority that other posters are deterred from questioning. The legal arguments I'm seeing elsewhere from other professionals suggest there's definitely points that prh47bridge hasn't considered, but because we have 'the authority issue' it makes it more difficult to present those legal counter arguments. It's dominating conversation.

It's a difficult one - we need experts with authority and experience to explain things, but I'm also wary when they are given too much authority without question (which includes from less qualified quarters but not necessarily uninformed - noting if you read another legal explanation elsewhere it's hard to then fully argue that point in legal language because you don't have that experience but it doesn't necessarily mean you are wrong either).

We've seen the consequences of 'runaway authority' on a subject which dismissed those who don't talk 'the correct language' and don't have the right credentials. So I'm very mindful to remind people not to get carried away and to read further and different sources.

I wouldn't go as far as Dwimmer as saying 'fanclub' but I do see a slight issue emerging too.

I think that’s fair enough. I also think in the past on these threads there have been robust - but fairly polite - back and forth discussions about legal issues when people have disagreed with prh47bridge. Generally these have come with evidence or at least well articulated arguments on both sides. What is not helpful is a slanging match - and to be fair, I think that at least some of the people defending prh47bridge’s contributions were doing so to shut that sort of thing down.

I feel somewhat responsible for all this, to be honest, for giving a poorly chosen/worded example of what NHS policy would/wouldn’t allow.

Please don't be deterred from questioning or challenging me. I don't intend to put people off doing so. And I don't claim to always be right. I am not. There are areas where the law is clear and a definitive answer is possible, but there are many areas where the law is less clear, so we have to try to work out how the courts will approach an issue that hasn't previously been decided. That has been the case for some of the questions raised on these threads. At the end of the day, until an issue is decided in court all any lawyer can do is offer their best guess as to what the courts will decide based on their personal knowledge of the area of law in question. And no lawyer knows all the law, which is why lawyers tend to specialise.

By the way, I mentioned Professor Sir Roy Meadow in my last post. That is a case where I disagree with the judge who ruled against GMC's decision to strike him off. The judge said his actions were not "serious professional misconduct". In my book, giving deliberately misleading evidence to court designed to ensure that innocent women were convicted of murdering their children, when those children actually died natural deaths, is about as serious as it can get.

If refuse treatment from a Jewish doctor I haven’t discriminated against the doctor. It’s not his or her right to treat me.

So... just to nail this down.... the hospital could say "sorry everyone on duty is Jewish, tough luck" but they don't have the right to say "go home, the non-Jewish doctor wont treat you beause your reasons are anti-semitic and we fully support our Jewish colleagues and your refusal to be treated by a Jew makes our Jewish colleagues feel unsafe"?

I think many of us come to these threads balancing our different hats and experiences. For me personally, feminism, professional expectations and being patient centred don’t always align as I would like.

What the discussion over the past few days has made me think about, is that while I understand conscientious withdrawal at a professional level and have practical experience of working with it day to day, I hadn’t considered that courts might take a different view to what is, broadly speaking, a settled position in most healthcare settings. Practically, it’s never been an issue in the 38 years of my professional practice, but I’m now aware that it could be. And as a feminist, I’ve learned to be wary of it will never happen.

That certainly should be the position. The fact that, if you change Jewish to trans, some hospitals are reported to have actually done this is, in my view, unlawful. I would like to see legal action by one of the patients affected.

Over on the education boards, I occasionally have arguments from teachers supporting a school on the basis that they are doing what is best for the child, when the school is breaking the law. The law is not always right, and the courts don't always think about the practical consequences of their decisions.

I worked in a small A&E department when a drunk patient objected to being seen by a 'foreign doctor'. I told him that I was the only British doctor in the department but was busy running the department so he could either be seen by a 'foreign doctor' or he would be waiting a very long time indeed before I got round to seeing him. He agreed to be seen by one of the foreign doctors.

So, NHS policies would state that a woman refusing to be treated by a trans identifying man when she has asked if she could be treated by a woman (let’s assume because of past trauma) is being transphobic, in much the same way as your patient was being racist.

The problem is that the woman has a legitimate concern and need, which is being dismissed as being transphobic (a bad thing) when it is actually about wanting same-sex care (strongly promoted as beneficial to mental health in many of the NHS policies I’ve read).

I think this stuff gets very complicated. I previously worked on a mental health ward (not in Fife btw) where the majority of patients were detained under the mental health act.

The majority of staff of all professions working on the ward were not white and incidents in which patients were racially abusive to staff were not uncommon. Sometimes those incidents were related to mental illness (delusion that people of a particular ethnicity were involved in a conspiracy / are terrorists); sometimes the patient was just racist (refusing to take medication from a Black staff member; using racist epithets). Incidents where female staff were sexually harassed were also quite frequent.

So what is supposed to happen here? The hospital has a duty of care to provide treatment to the patient. They also have a duty of care to protect staff from abuse and harassment in the course of their job. And to protect other patients who are potentially also on the end of similar abuse.

There's honestly no good, straightforward answer. In extreme cases, incidents would be reported to the police (who were not generally interested in doing anything) or a patient could be transferred to a secure setting due to risk of violence. But generally, the expectation was that staff put up with racist/sexist abuse as just a part of their job; and that patients muddled through until they were discharged. It was really messy.

In fact it’s the same issue as Sandie had. She was not objecting to DrU’s transness, but to the fact that he is male.

But NHS policies really, really do not want to address that difference.

In other news, it seems some MPs still haven't got the memo. I hope the minister ignores them.

MPs oppose Starmer’s gender-critical pick for equality watchdog

There is a difference between saying you don’t want Jewish doctor (just using this as it was mentioned up thread) and being racially abusive. The first one should be told their maybe a longer wait/ no one else available the second might need further intervention as staff do have a right to not be abused.

Its the difference between 'I don't want a male person who identifies as a woman doing my smear/mammogram/other intimate procedure' I asked for a woman and I'm prepared to wait for one and 'I don't want a trans Dr of either sex to examine my wrist injury.'

There is a difference between the two and those of rational mind can see that one is perfectly legitimate concern while the other is much more on a par with not wanting a 'foreign' Dr. But as ever the boundary pushers and the everything is transphobic wails don't want to acknowledge that there is ever a circumstance in which women can legitimately say no thank you.

I found this so frustrating.

Surely it's their job to make the argument for changing the law in parliament if that is what they want to do.

What do they think the EHRC should do? Advise that the SC ruling is irrelevant?

I couldn't identify any action of Mary-Ann Stephenson's that doesn't simply support upholding human rights law.

That archive link won't open for me but then it's been on the blink for a few days.

The Times have a follow-up piece re Mary-Ann Stephenson stating it is expected she will be appointed and the select committee advice ignored. 🤞

Apologies I don’t have a link (just read in the actual paper!)

I think that’s in accordance with the law, and I think that’s how it works in practice too. Healthcare professionals regularly treat rapists and murderers, Nazi sympathizers, avowed racists and other “undesirables” without complaint, as long as they sit still and don’t get (too) mouthy while they’re being treated, as a retired doctor just pointed on here.
For the record I’m grateful they do and I’d be horrified if they didn’t.

As far as the “your attitude makes me feel unsafe” argument, that seems hard to land in the context of a patient. As long as the patient sits still who has time to care what’s in their head? And a security guard is available for violent patients (of which hospitals have a lot of experience - and I’m sure the violence is the issue, not the racist attitude that might accompany it).

It gets more complicated when someone says they don’t want to be seen by a male doctor, rather than a Jewish doctor because we all see that as more legitimate and the NHS does too, no? Then when you mix in that different people understand “male” in different ways it gets even more complex to unpick.

I agree. Doctors shouldn’t have to put up with racist abuse, or abuse of any kind.

I would hope that someone who doesn’t want a Jewish doctor would be told that the hospital doesn’t keep a record of the religious affiliations of its staff, nor does it have a mechanism for patients to pick and choose their doctor. If for some reason they don’t want to be seen by Dr. Cohen (Or Dr. Patel, or Dr. Hussain) then they will be marked as having refused treatment and there’s nothing more the department can offer them. That would be my expectation.

Thing is in wouldn't want dr Upton to even treat a sprained ankle. After his testimony on the stand its clear that he either has so little understanding of biology that he doesn't know the difference between male and female bodies or he's so delusional that he truly believes that he's changed sex. Both of these scenarios mean he's not fit to practice medicine imho.
I live in fife and if I'm ever offered care from dr Upton for myself or any of my family I will refuse to be treated by him nor will I let him treat my family.
That's not transphobia its not wanting care from a dr I truly believe is not fit to practice. I like many others complained to the gmc about dr Upton but they won't take the complaint whilst the case is still live unfortunately

I think patients should be allowed to refuse treatment from a particular doctor for whatever reason they like, e.g Dr Upton, past experience with that doctor. They should then be told that they are likely to have to wait, or go elsewhere if no other doctor is available. Being abusive to a doctor is not on, but it could be down to mental health issues or dementia and that should be taken into account as I'm sure it is.

That's brought back memories of visiting a relative in hospital and watching an elderly lady being helped to use a walking frame. The patient was grumpily swearing away at the nurse, who responded with a smile and expert assistance. I have the greatest respect for medics who cope with this sort of thing day in and day out.

I think the equivalence I would make here would be more, I would refuse treatment from a Dr that was a scientologist or Jehovah's witness, because their beliefs are anti scientific and I would worry would impact on their care of me. Similarly, Dr Upton believes that is is possible to change sex and he is biologically female, which I view to be totally delusional and would make me question his fitness to practice. The relationship between Dr and patient is built in trust. I could not trust someone who is lying to themselves and others to this degree about something so important. If he accepted his innate maleness then I would be fine being treated by him.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/5cc666a5-b885-4b41-bb45-a0c2b0c83cd2?shareToken=ff94614e8c11851e7d64f74f5b9295a2

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Fucking hell. I'm sick of seeing the phrase 'gender critical ideology'. Believing that gender is a social construct and that humans cannot change sex, is not ideology, it's factual. It's the GI lot using our language against us again (or attempting to).