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

I think colleagues reported she admired Trump?
Also her family confirmed this on social media.
But it’s hardly damning evidence of anything is it? She could be the biggest MAGA fan ever and it’s totally irrelevant

Fife has a lot of great spots. Nice to have a car as the buses/trains aren't great unless you're going to or from the big towns, or nearby the E coast mainline

Was that not for the consultants only?

I agree there are other places he could have chosen to change.

Yes, I recall an episode of SB, though not what particular subject it was on - possibly food supplement related - where a great deal of attention was paid to statistical evidence, and distinctly remember thinking, why aren’t people as particular as this when it comes to gender medicine.

When you said pruning, my first thought was that yes, they’d at least get to listen to Gardeners’ Question Time in double something boring on a Friday afternoon (possibly one of my lessons, if I wasn’t retired). When I was a form tutor, I used to have the BBC News up on my smart board from about 8 am, it prompted all sorts of discussion. And we watched a lot of the Japanese tsunami in real time, along with many kids from other TGs who drifted in.

I think the room that has been discussed on twitter is a Doctor's Mess and is probably intended for doctors on call who live too far away to be at home when on call. It probably wouldn't be suitable as a substitute changing room, but there obviously were other spaces, as Sandie was told about them.

The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect you kindly told us about enables us to think (even unconsciously) 'they're useless on that but they might have a point about this'. What other option do we have?

You've succinctly summarized the problem. I think that's why I continue to give some credibility to other stories. I'm in no position to assess its accuracy so I sort of believe the story (though with a huge bag of salt). If it's something I care about, I'll read several sources and consciously try to find conflicting versions. I'm not sure that helps much bc I keep feeling like it's all inaccurate, just with a different spin. If I can, I try to talk to ppl who know much more than I do about the subject or read things from experts in the field. But I only have time for that if I really care about the subject.

I also try to remind myself that I don't know much. Another of my favorite cognitive biases is Dunning-Kruger. Many people use it to criticize others but I try to use it by remembering that if something is outside my area of expertise, I'm likely to overestimate how much I know.

Except this is the defence witness list. SP’s witnesses were heard in February. As the claimant, her case was heard first, and this is the defence’s response.

Apart from this gripping Employment Tribunal I recently watched the crime drama Karen Pirie based on a Val McDermid & set in St Andrews which looked nice.

It is also worth remembering that the SC judgment only concerned TIMs with a GRC. DU does not even have a GRC.

I doubt that the forensic phone inspector is being called by the defence.

I thought it was very telling that Sandie's witnesses were not colleagues, they were family. Sandie appears to have maintained a detached professionalism at work and turned to those outside of her work environment to disclose her upset/distress.

While I don't doubt that her suspension, orders not to speak to anyone, other people's fear of also being branded witch impacted on her within work support to me it also reflects someone who has developed a healthy separation between work and self, her distress isn't her patience problem, a bad shift on which shitty things have happened need to be parked and emotionally dealt with later as the next patient needs your A game.

Dr U seems to be the complete opposite, work is about meeee, it's about how I feel, what I want. I can't help but feel patient number 2 will get care slightly tainted by patient number 1's accidental misgendering because of an inability to set aside an emotional reaction to events. Transness aside anyone without the ability to stop their personal life leaking into their professional one is going to find A&E an impossible place to work. Parents with sick children don't need a Dr who isn't on the ball because their hamster has just died.

That was Upton's own inference I think. Until the cross examination he hadn't considered that a woman might have other reasons such as a heavy period that would explain needing to change mid shift.

Hence “the respondent”.

I took notes from TT during Part 1 to build my own timeline. I’ve not updated for Part 2. But all the dates are listed on TT if you can’t find a published/pictorial version …

The supreme court judgment said

First, there can be no doubt that Parliament intended that the words “man” and

“woman” in the SDA 1975 would refer to biological sex – the trans community of course
existed at the time but their recognition and protection did not.

I'm not sure how it can be argued that the 1992 regulations were not using the same definitions as the 1975 sex Discrimination Act

Even more of the “all about me”.

The idea that a busy nurse would take time out of a night shift to find and “confront” him is telling in itself.

Yes, agreed. It's just that some of the recent Case Management Notes are not publicly available so I wonder if the updated list came from a Note available to view at the court, and if that document had context that explained how new witnesses were added. There are quite a few names added including the forensic phone expert and an information security expert. And those two nurses. Since nothing has been released about why they are all going to be there, and since Fife clearly wants this to be over, I wonder if those nurses may be people who now feel safe to be part of an NC mic drop moment?

Thanks for explaining! I’ll reset my view on this point.

There was something on those emails that were transcripted yesterday. He only had 4 shifts left in the dept.

I'm convinced they initally suspended her thinking, keep them apart until hes gone and we "investigate" then brush it all under the carpet.

He's then tried to put the boot in, come out with the patient safety claims which they couldn't up hold.

And then it kicked off big time.

We always had R4 in the car going to school. I swapped over to local radio after DC asked a complicated question about a finance story and I realised I was not helping their social success at school (which was an issue).

This was in the playlist era of ‘I don’t feel like dancing, no sir, no dancing today..!’ and Leona Lewis Keep bleeding love.

It’s still pretty much the most recent popular stuff I know 🤣.

He has credibility?!

I find it astonishing that this is the defence witness list. They have so far, without exception, been an absolute car crash and done more to aid Sandie than their own side.

I did think it telling that when the subject of the H&S regulations 1992 came up (raised by NC), Isla Bumba had no knowledge of them. You'd think that if the defence was on the ball, they'd have thought this through in terms of putting her forward as a witness.

Indeed the selection of witnesses full stop has been interesting. Basically Upton's besties without thought as to whether they'd help or hinder the case.

That raises a few questions about who thought this was a good idea and at whose insistence this happened.

It's long become apparent that the interests of NHS Fife and the interests of Dr Upton are very much not one and the same and there is a sense that Upton is going to effectively manage to bring NHS Fife down with him whether intentionally or unintentionally.

Was it these two instances? As far as I can tell these are the only times 'locker' has been used since proceedings restarted.

"Will use P for both panelists if qu arise.
P - you were asked where you got changed as a consultant. Are there any lockers for consultants?
EP - no

...

"JR - DU says not sure of next steps, what level of urgency did DU have?
EP - possibly discussed changing elsewhere, would still have to use lockers in there, it's poss we discussed that till we knew what to do."

So, not the phrase 'locker room' which was used in the press release:

"While the claimant raised concerns about a trans woman’s use of a locker room, this was not the reason that NHS Fife’s internal investigation was initiated. "

However, one sign that is not present in the press release is the use of the em dash which is frequently over-used in AI generated text. And even more conspicuous is the use of the hyphen where it's not appropriate punctuation (but easy to type, like MN)

"The health board is not pursuing any legal action against the claimant - it is instead defending itself, as it is required to do."

I would say on balance I'm not convinced that it was substantially AI generated. But the use of 'locker room', I thought, was a good catch.

The Midwife who caught my baby in a WTF moment as soon as things calmed down and baby was safely in my arms, announced "I'm going to get changed, I've not even got gloves on"

That sort of thing must happen all the time in A&E.

I wonder has something like that ever been posted on Reddit?

I like it when posters do what Tootsweets23 has done here - that's new evidence, so I'll rethink my previous opinion. Proper grown-up reaction.

I also love it when posters come back to say sorry, I over-reacted and got a bit snippy, and there's an immediate response 'apology accepted', or 'I realise I got that wrong'.

I know it's a bit Pollyanna-ish, but I really value the fact that we can admit we were mistaken, we can have differences of opinion, sometimes even go OTT because it affects us deeply, but it's not going to escalate into a slagging match. Usually, anyway, we're only human