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

When my kids were little and wee upset that someone had said something mean toor about them the first thing I asked was ‘is it true?’ Because it is isn’t true it isn’t really an insult.

If it isn’t true, then it is someone being ill-informed/ mistaken/ spiteful and we went through the steps of dealing with that situation.

If it was true, then I encourage reflection on their part (not easy) and how they should then react.

As a teacher I have been misgendered a lot. Is it an insult - no because it isn’t true. Even if it was spiteful I wouldn’t be insulted, as it would reflect more on the speaker than me.

Which comes down the very core of why being called a man is so bad to a TIM, it is because they know it is true, but don’t want to do any reflecting on their part.

Fife can be ordered to pay SP's costs. Such awards are unusual in employment tribunals, but their repeated disclosure failures may lead to such an award. Other behaviour may be held against them, either in terms of costs or compensation. For example, the judge should not be happy with their repeated attempts to brand SP as racist. They have not produced any evidence to support this allegation and, even if it is true, it is irrelevant.

Which she denies and says would have been impossible anyway, since she was on permanent night shift.

As I said previously - don't forget to consider the cost of employing someone like Isla Bumba who I'm yet to work out what she actually does including her salary, employer NI cost and employer pension costs which must be clocking up to at least £75,000 a year.

Great post. I think I understand better, now, the motivation behind Tribunal Tweets. I still get distressed by some of the cruelty across social media, but I can see that is sad collateral damage in the project of holding to account.

The advertising money left the papers and went to Facebook et al
There was no cash left to generate decent news coverage
The papers went online and found click-bait was more effective at generating eyeballs
Online has little regulation so you can print just about anything

Although that would be amazing I don't imagine SP wants anything to do with RCN now she's suing them 😁

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.

That is very often the case for private companies. The NHS has been completely captured for years though. I know several NHS doctors and nurses, intelligent, capable and compassionate people, and this is the one issue where they lie through their teeth, claim black is white and snap, "I don't care!" at any mentions of safety issues. They get angry.

I don't know how the medical institution got taken over like this.

Thanks @prh47bridge
So IF Fife is told to pay SP’s costs then it would be a sign that their case was unusually poor.

What a great post. Not even from a perspective of completely agreeing (I may well but haven't given it enough thought), but just for being interesting, intelligent and thought-provoking.

This is why I love Mumsnet.

Yes. And part of Monday is going to be taken up dealing with the insane statement.

I do feel sorry for all the lawyers. It will have completely screwed any downtime they might have had this weekend. And I include JR in that. She wasn't expecting this. No shopping trip for her around the makeup counters of Dundee looking for a special present - it'll be an Amazon order for delivery to the hotel.

@PlasticAcrobat The ONLY people to blame if those involved in the tribunal are being subjected to abuse are those who made the tribunal necessary in the first place. Had NHS Fife run their organisation properly there would be no tribunal. There would have been a quick investigation, Sandie would have been back at work and Upton would have been told he needed to change elsewhere and develop more resilience.

The forensic examination of Upton's phone might reveal more serious problems for him but that would not be happening if he had not made serious allegations against a colleague that have now been found not proven.

Never blame a victim for the actions of their oppressor.

THANk YOU!

This!! The lack of local accountability and scrutiny leads to organisations playing to echo chambers and disconnected communities.

My guess, would he'd rather put other people in the hotseat for a grilling.
Someone else suggested he'd possibly been threatened by Upton which as a joint defence they can't really come out with.

Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is Public Relations.

It's important to realise just how important the service Tribunal Tweets are providing. A group of volunteers trying to accurately (and bloody quickly!) note what is being discussed in court in real time, which many of us would not otherwise be able to access and would have to rely on the interpretations of journalists who will naturally have their own biases. Look at the difference between reporting between different newspapers - the headlines can be polar opposites on the same discussion!

The whole concept of open justice and democracy is superb. And it's why NHS Fife fought so hard for the proceedings to be held privately and to exclude Tribunal Tweets.

Lies will not survive sunlight.

Like I SO would not count on that!

(Although I suspect senior management are not out brunching with their families with an easy mind).

Long time lurker here - totally gripped by the whole extraordinary process and very thankful for these amazing threads and the work of TT. I wish I could meet you all in a pub and chew it over in person! No one in my life is really engaged in this stuff.

I have a question wrt to the “patient care” misconduct allegations made by Upton. These have been dismissed by Fife’s internal process due to no insufficient evidence. Surely there should have been some comeback on Upton for that? Clearly he’s currently protected by being joined with Fife in the case, but it feels very wrong that someone can make such a claim, weeks or months after the alleged incidents, and not be held to account for their own motivation in making such allegations?

It was touched on by NC (I think rather than CE but not sure) briefly yesterday that it was a very serious thing for any incidents such as the racism claim to have been noted but not reported. I hope they will come back to that line of investigation as it deserves a good airing.

Fwiw this is what Reform and the rise of reform is all about. People are recognising the issue though not necessarily understanding what Reform intends to do and what else they stand for. People voting for reform are not stupid as other like to make them out to be.

However I do see Reform as grifters in their own right looking to fill this void of lack of accountability with their own henchmen and women rather than to fix the problems. They sense an opportunity.

This is why disenfranchised lefties and liberals need to speak up and start kicking dealing with the shite within their own camps before it's too late.

Some of the speculation about the authorship of the NHS Fife statement or influence on it, is beyond absurd.

Journalism has become reprinting the press release without scrutiny and a sense of curiosity of whether it reflects what has actually happened.

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.

See also the Post Office, infected blood and vaginal mesh scandals.

Totally agree. I gave AI the task of comparing two different exam specs last week with URLs. I asked for a gap analysis and a list of topics to revise to make up the difference. It produced absolute garbage.

I’ve concluded that it’s like the worst type of over confident engineering graduate. One of the really dangerous ones who just makes stuff up if they don’t know. All ChatGPT outputs should come with a % certainty indicator to help users understand how reliable things are…

I don't think he can be punished for making an allegation, unless another investigation proved it was trumped up or malicious. If you get punished for someone not being found guilty, nobody will make allegations unless evidence is truly overwhelming.