NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #32

[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.

Thread 30: 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
Thread 31: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5375819-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-31

Surely there's no way on earth that they'd be allowed to appeal. Not even thinking of possible legal arguments. There must be someone higher up who would say "Enough. We've lost and spent enough money doing so. No more."

I imagine her desk is her bed, and her desk set up is her iPhone and TikTok.

I couldn’t disagree more.

Putting Sandie on initially Special Leave and then suspending her during the investigation could be seen as a proportionate response if they did it properly and also treated DrU the same.

The problem is that they appear to not have followed their own procedures and they did not consider suspending DrU. Suspension done properly for the duration of a timely investigation can be a sensible approach.

To be fair the instinct to get HR advice was right and using Special Leave for a couple of shifts to get that advice was not that unreasonable but they should also have considered DrU.

The fact HR isn’t available at night and weekends will be a regular problem for the NHS and other 24/7 organisations. The question is should there be a skeleton HR staff providing 24/7 advice.

So Fife has assessed their legal costs so far at £220k. Let’s say this next section of tribunal costs them a bit less, say £180k, so that’s £400k altogether.
And if Sandie’s are the same that takes us to £800k.
plus any damages awarded, we’re almost touching £1million.
Even if it’s being paid by the NHS consortium mutual it’s still going to be noticed - so won’t it prompt a round of investigation and recommends across NHS Scotland?
Anyone know if Fife can be ordered to cover Sandie’s costs?
Anyone know how much she could be awarded in damages?
Once everyone is hit by the price of this circus there will be a lot less ‘be kind’.

The ET can’t set legal precedent.
the Supreme Court as outlined the law for clarity.
that’s my understanding but IANAL

Thanks - I did see that the other day. Unfortunately, I don’t have capacity (or the skills) to put myself forward, but would be very happy to support others that want to go for it. I suppose nominating SP is out of the question?

In my opinion as a retired A&E consultant there is zero chance that KS had had anything to do with this statement as your average A&E consultant is very low down on the pecking order. This will have come from much higher up & should have been reviewed by comms & legal.

I still struggle too see how NHS Fife’s legal representative can salvage anything out of a case where the organisation claims:

We suspended this member of staff because her conduct in raising her concerns about a trans colleague using the women’s changing facilities was unacceptable.

When challenged about what way she SHOULD have escalated her concerns, the response from witnesses is:

There is NO way she could or should have raised her concerns because objecting to a trans woman using women’s facilities is intolerant and transphobic.

Surely NHS Fife should have given up the ghost at this point and attempted to settle?

In the old days newspapers would publish verbatim reports of the preceding days court cases very much in the same manner as TT is doing for SM.

it has always been built in to the process that the public have a right to this access and for many good reasons.

The ‘marmalade drop’ moment is newspaper speak for when readers are so stunned by what they read while eating their toast they let the marmalade fall off it.

There would have been as much speculation and gossip from those transcripts as these. Folk would have written letters voicing their thoughts to friends and family - those letters would be read out by others. Ministers would have used it as material for the pulpit.

it has always been that way just be different means.

@Largesso I can see why you might see the hand of KS in there. Governance wise it would be v usual for someone of her level to be involved in these types of comms. This is exec / board level stuff. And, considering the shit she has landed them in, I would imagine they are lining her up as a scape goat, and keeping her well clear. But then again, nothing would surprise me about this lot.

When things are this mad it is always possible that someone very high up the food chain is trans or has a trans family member.

It doesn't set a legal precedent but, if they're doing their job properly, DEI "professionals" up and down the country will be following this tribunal and taking notes. I think it would be quite insane if this was repeated elsewhere (although insanity is the TRA MO so who knows).

The other people who'll be paying attention are women. Sandie Peggie empowers us all to object and to talk about our objection.

I trust Gribbon and the rest of the legal team that the RCN has a case to answer.

Anybody else wondering whether they are going to get through all the remaining witnesses and the submissions in the next 6 days?

That said, JR must be having a miserable weekend wondering what there is left to salvage.

You are correct. Fife have tried to argue that the disciplinary process was about patient care, but it is clear from the evidence that the process was triggered by the conversation in the changing room. The patient care allegations were retrofitted later.

Yes, regarding what you say about the old days, I do think that papers used to do a much better job of just sitting for hours in court and reporting exchanges in detail. In fact, that's how my dad began his career as a local reporter, though the cases were along the lines of bicycle theft etc.

I think you have nailed what I wanted to say better than i did, when I spoke of wanting papers to do a better job of reporting the tribunal than we see them doing. The trend among papers has been to ditch relatively costly factual donkey work in favour of what is essentially commentary and click hunting. So we trust them less and want direct access.

I think this is a good illustration of why joint defence is a bad idea in law - because there's a good chance there will be a conflict of interest between the parties.

If I were advising Fife, I'd tell them they're snookered anyway because of the incompentence and procedural failings we've already seen. Their best hope would be mitigation, and mitigation would probably rest on a few points:

• ScotGov were telling us for years that TWAW
• The supposed experts (Stonewall, Scottish Trans etc) told us that it would be discriminatory and expose us to legal risk if we didn't let a trans person use the facilities of their choice
• Our work experience kid DEI lead gave the same advice
• We googled what other trusts had as policy and everyone was doing the same thing
• Therefore, before the Supreme Court clarified the law, it was reasonable for us to believe that we were following the law

Further mitigation, and better mitigation, might include:

• DU misled us on the trigger incident, and given our (wrong but good faith) understanding of the law, that set us on a course with unfortunate consequences

The trouble is that they can't say DU misled them if they're sharing representation with DU. And that inability to throw DU under the bus means they're stuck with defending the indefensible.

Its increasingly clear to me that NHS Fife will appeal and claim things like bias and unfairness as the reason. They wont let the matter drop. From what JR said to the judge about open justice (or whatever her words were, can't quite remember), this seems to be the route they will take. JR increasingly reminds me of Delores Umbridge in her manner.
Whoever wrote that statement, very clearly used AI to write it, and jumped the gun. Its just outrageous in tone, content, timing, accusations, the lot.
I just wish all these successful outcomes had more publicity because I stil know and work with people who are captured.

I think the opposite.

The problem has been a decline in reporting standards and reading of cases like this.

In the past this type of thing was the bread and butter of journalism. Particularly local news.

You'd have reporters sit in court for hours taking lots of notes and then filling huge amounts of column inches with the details and then, when they were published, the public read them viciously.

Its absolutely fascinating to read old newspapers from the 1800s right up until the 1980s and 1990s doing this.

Then social media came along and there was a massive decline in this, newspaper sales plummeted and so did the numbers of journalists as it's expensive to employ someone to sit in court all day.

This is what newspapers did - they held power to account and stopped people in positions of power from being able to control the narrative to the degree they have in recent years in the absence of proper scrutiny.

This is actually a much needed return in checks and balances within a democracy. And the result will be a clearing out of grifters, incompetents, the negligents and frankly the incompetents.

The reason this case is attracting so much attention is precisely because of this dynamic and a sense of how the rot has set it and there's absolutely no accountability in institutions which should be completely transparent and open.

They have instead been taken over by those willing to effectively abuse power - the lack of process in the disciplinary investigation and procedure we see in the Sandie Peggie case is an example of this. It is not the only one on going within the NHS at present. The whole maternity scandal is another.

This case is about trans activism taking over but it's also about the unaccountable taking over. Trans activism has always been a symptom of wider social issues and political arcs - and those who failed to recognise this are the ones now panicking the most as they've started to wake up to the reality post Trump election. Trump could not have won but for this underlying public resentment and growing lack of public trust is institutions that once had massive public respect.

It will play out differently in the UK because of the differences in culture and politics but it's all part of the same issue driven by changes in communication and how that's driven social change.

But don't blame this on the failings of the public. The public appetite for accountability hasn't changed. It's just that the public haven't realised the importance of certain issues and have become disconnected from the process of holding power to account due to changes in communication. What we are seeing is that starting to reverse and winding desires to restore a sense of fairness and justice that has been lost.

I think the failure to understand the decline in local newspapers and the parallel decline in local communities has been particularly bad in those who you'd call the 'landyarded' too. They are mobile and move from place to place for work so often don't become tied to an area enough to care. Hence why we have political divisions on geographical / socio-economic lines.

This stuff is things I've talked about for a very very long time on MN. Nothing has changed my mind on this. This is just the latest manifesto of the same thing.

@cigarsmokingwoman but NHS Fife are not an independent entity who are funding this themselves. They don't have carte blanche to spend taxpayers money on things like this (one would hope).

Cross posts.

Bang on.

Not forgetting SP (possibly / maybe / I hear / the cat told me) complained about the smell of people's lunch

The loser can appeal if the judge has failed to run the hearings correctly, or the tribunal has made an error in law, or the tribunal has made a decision that is not supported by any evidence. Appealing just because you disagree with the decision will get you nowhere.

And another cross post.

Yes. Glad there's a few of us who recognise this.

Yes I think normal circs are long out the window.

I think while this was being drafted they wouldn’t have known about Searle’s email unless they’d gone through the updates bundle. Someone in the legal team might have alerted NHS Fife to it and warned them to be prepped but I’m of the opinion comms between NHS Fife and the legal team have completely failed.

On the other hand Searle will know full well so I think she has used her senior position within the halloed consultants circle to leverage this statement into existence and then influence, comment, add etc as it is being drafted.

A propro the other discussion re AI - I have now doubt of AIs hand. The headings give it away. They will have written a draft and then put it through GenAI which will then have given this structure to it. So it won’t all be GenAI. Also, the initial paras about Sex Matters were clearly not GenAI. a) GenAI as a veneer of sophistication in its expression but ain’t actually very clever (have tested it on cryptic crosswords!) and b) it is trained to be much more temperate