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Day 2 | PM Session | Peggie Sandie v NHS Fife & Dr Upton
🔥 Confidentiality Collapsed, Safeguarding Side-Stepped: NHS Fife’s Leadership in Disarray
By the end of the afternoon, the tribunal had laid bare a pattern of procedural collapse, managerial confusion, and ideological rigidity. Gillian Malone, Director of Nursing at NHS Fife, returned to the stand- but this time, the focus was sharper. Under questioning from Naomi Cunningham KC and the tribunal panel itself, Malone’s role in the suspension of Sandy Peggie became both clearer and more troubling.
Confidentiality, supposedly a pillar of the disciplinary process, had not just eroded - it was weaponised. Documents showed that SP was not explicitly warned to keep quiet until months after her suspension. Meanwhile, senior NHS staff - including investigators and potential witnesses - were openly emailing one another, sharing statements, and circulating details about the case. Consultants were briefed on SP’s version of events before an investigation had even begun.
Malone could not explain it. She agreed that this was not how it should have been handled. But once again, she claimed detachment from responsibility: the decisions weren’t hers. She hadn’t seen key documents until the tribunal bundle. She didn’t recall appointing investigators. She didn’t know why months passed between telling AG to investigate and the process actually starting.
Yet the fallout from these decisions was undeniable. SP had told managers she felt isolated - colleagues had been told not to speak to her. The environment had become, in her words, humiliating and intimidating. But Malone, when pressed, downgraded the situation to merely “awkward.”
It wasn’t just the process that had failed. It was the principle. SP had raised a concern about a male colleague - Dr Beth Upton - using the female-only changing room. Rather than accommodate her rights, NHS Fife tried to silence her. An internal email from Lottie Miles showed that managers sought to prevent SP from referring to Upton as “he” or “man”—language entirely in line with her protected belief that sex is real and relevant. Malone insisted this wasn’t an attempt to suppress GC views, but the effect was unmistakable: SP was gagged, while Upton was shielded.
The panel drilled down into the authority structure. If Malone wasn’t responsible, who was? She admitted her job included governance, complaints, and adverse events - yet she’d left the core of the investigation to a junior colleague, Esther Davidson, who had only just taken on her post. Even then, there was no documentation, no clarity on timelines, no evidence of proper risk assessments before the decision to suspend.
In a moment of rhetorical clarity, Cunningham posed a hypothetical: if a male employee walked in on a woman changing, that would be sexual harassment. If he installed a camera, unquestionably so. But what if he said, “I’m a woman now” - would that change the reality of the intrusion? Even Malone agreed: it shouldn’t. And yet that is precisely what NHS Fife allowed. Because DU said he was a woman, female staff were told to accommodate him - or face sanction.
Asked whether DU’s behaviour on Christmas Eve constituted sexual harassment, Malone’s answer was damning: “No. It was SP who behaved unprofessionally.”
It was a chilling inversion. The woman who raised a safeguarding concern became the problem. The man whose presence triggered discomfort became the protected party. The institution wrapped it all in DEI compliance and left fairness behind.
Today’s testimony didn’t just expose administrative error. It revealed an NHS leadership culture where policy replaces judgment, where belief in biological sex is suspect, and where women who speak up face censure - not support.
The tribunal continues. But after this, the question is not whether NHS Fife followed process. It’s whether the process itself is fit for women at all.