NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #31

[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 resumed 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] by 5pm on Wednesday 9 July. Detailed instructions were provided here:

drive.google.com/file/d/16-9POEZ7yHWUr6EmbfquJZO18Gv78bSm/view

The hearing is being live tweeted by x.com/tribunaltweets and there's additional information here: tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr-005. 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.ph/WSSjg.

An alternative to Twitter is to use Nitter: nitter.net/tribunaltweets or nitter.poast.org/tribunaltweets

Links to previous threads #1 to #29 can be found in the header of thread #30, found here: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5375337-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-30

here y'are 😍

Thank you kindly! I've got snacks if anyone wants some? Courgette and feta fritters, hummus and pitta, crisps and cashews.

JFC Fife 🪏

Straining my ears to hear the chink of ice cubes and cracking open of tonic & gin from Big Sonds room?
And a G&T for me too, phew!

Maya was quoted in the express "Maya Forstater, CEO of human rights charity Sex Matters responded: "This is an extraordinary intervention from NHS Fife, even by the board’s standards. NHS Fife has dug itself into a reputational black hole. If the only way forward the board can see is to lash out, including by criticising Sex Matters, which has at all times acted with propriety and in pursuit of its charitable objects, that suggests desperation.""

I wonder if there's a paper trail to show which absolute fucking MELT authorised that statement for release?

Also, I can't get back into that webpage so is it possible they've already taken it down? Thank god for the Wayback Machine!

Good luck @BezMills - depending on how South you are now, you may have interesting weather… Pies for breakfast? 😁

SM were not responsible for the headlines in the Times and the Telegraph.

I haven't been following SM's social media or press releases, but I don't think their intervention is required to create interest in the tribunal. We are quite a long way past that.

"Direct discrimination is defined as “because of” a PC"

Not wishing to derail this thread in any way and these are just my thoughts.

Direct discrimination involves treating an individual less favourably because of a PC that they have. Eg making a particular woman use the men's toilets.

Indirect discrimination occurs where there is a practice or policy imposed that, while applied ostensibly fairly to everyone, in fact disadvantages a group of people who share a PC.

For a direct discrimination case it isn't necessary to show that all people who share a PC suffer less favourable treatment, just the individual concerned.

It is not necessary to show, for example, that an employer always discriminates against women: it is enough to show that they discriminated against a particular woman in a particular case.

To go back to toilets (sorry), there was the case of Earl Shilton Town Council v Miller [2023] EAT 5

Ms Miller was the only woman working for the council at that location and was required to use the men's toilets.

Leaving aside the 1992 Regulations, Ms Miller did not argue that providing unisex toilets (these weren't really unisex anyway) put women at a particular disadvantage compared to men, which would have been an indirect discrimination claim.

Instead she argued that this was not a practice of treating men and women the same (ie giving them the same toilets) but they were in fact treating men and women differently and that different treatment on the basis of sex was direct discrimination.

The reason she said that is that men had toilet facilities "adequate to their needs" (urinals etc) and that she, as a woman, did not.

The court agreed with her.
.

"But I also infer from this that you cannot lawfully discriminate against someone who doesn’t hold the PC of GR, which is the prohibition against positive discrimination (unless a specific exemption applies). Because that is treating the non-GR person to a detriment because of a PC."

I'm a bit confused by this. Do you mean perhaps "that you can lawfully discriminate against someone..."?

If you are saying that a person without the PC of GR cannot make a discrimination claim because of lack of GR then I believe that you are right.

However, there is still potentially the claim of sex discrimination or belief discrimination.

For example, a club that lets women and transwomen join could face a claim for belief discrimination in that men who do not believe in gender identity cannot join but those who do can. Or a sex discrimination claim that having to live as a woman places a much higher burden on a man (eg living an unconventional lifestyle) than it does a woman.

@PestoHoliday

Do you have a recipe for the courgette fritters please?

Was it my imagination or did JR get more and more pink in the face as the discussion about the press release went on? She made a good stab of muddying the waters and saying that it was OK because everyone had been threatened (more than Sex Matters and their imbly bimbly citizen's arrest problem) but in the end, who needs a client like NHS Fife?! Her witnesses the last few days have made her job harder the longer it went on... harumpf. And now she has to find Charlotte Tilbury cosmetics for sale in Dundee? Good luck with that. Also find it funny - anyone who deems dundee safer than Edinburgh never had a night out at the Tally-Ho in the 1990s

If the judge thinks the statement is critical of his decisions, that will not go well for Fife.

As per one of my earlier posts, there is nothing to prevent the participants in an ET from making statements to the press. Fife haven't broken any rules by doing so. But making such statements is almost always a bad move and this one appears particularly ill advised. If I were JR, I would be spitting tacks.

Don't be ridiculous. If we know nothing else we know Fife despise a paper trail for official business - unless it is a rogue consultant emailing the shit out of unproven allegations to as many colleagues as will fit in a cc box

It's strange. I have used that sort of insurance to defend an ET claim, but you can't go rogue or you risk losing the indemnity (is that the right word, I am hot and tired.) They must have the statement through legal before publishing.

Have you see this?

https://x.com/moleatthedoor/status/1946195501528879230

Absolute perfection.

Maybe it was Isla Bumba, going full scorched earth on NHS Fife.

If I were JR, I'd be advising them to settle by Monday. If the judge is pissed off with them, Sandie's settlement will be even bigger than we expect.

I honestly don't know how Sandie can go back and work in that hospital with these witnesses.

😂😂😂

Snort laugh

ETA: Especially at the How to forget dept. (Twinned with the Foreign Legion) bit 😂

I remember it being used by one of Ken Dodd's Diddymen. 😁

"Help with literally going outside" 😂

I could actually use their services today. Do you know whether they do home visits?

We are in areas that, as far as I am aware, haven't been covered by the courts. However, when you say, "Direct discrimination involves treating an individual less favourably because of a PC that they have.", that isn't quote what the law says. It says, "Direct discrimination involves treating an individual less favourably because of a PC." There is no requirement for the individual to actually have the PC. It therefore appears that you cannot directly discriminate against an individual for not having a particular PC. This is only relevant for some of the PCs, of course. There is no-one who does not have the PC of age, for example. But the wording suggests that, for example, whilst you cannot discriminate against someone because of their disability, you also cannot discriminate against someone because they don't have a disability. Of course, we cannot be sure unless someone takes a case to court.

Sandie doesn't have to settle and I hope she doesn't. We need the ruling and the judge's remarks.

I’ve just caught up and speed read most of the past hours worth of posts.

That NHS Fife statement is totally because Maya transcribed the emails that Fife didn’t want anyone to see.

if anyone is familiar with the current Nationwide adverts, I’m imagining someone senior who is very like the Dominic West character having an enormous meltdown and instructing that statement to be put out. The PR department is either incompetent, or ignored. Has no one at NHS Fife heard of the Streisand Effect?!

Good point - we really need the judge to be focussed entirely on the case and relevant facts, and not swayed by the Fife press release. It would be awful to win on "a technicality".

I'm wondering if the threats are coming from the tras as they were really upset about NHS Fife witnesses misgendering dr Upton