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 I read somewhere that the phone was handed over so no need to agree thr submission, as it were, so rejected in those grounds. I could be wrong.

I imagine if so then the phone was given in the condition only certain things were examined.

Is there a single person on the planet who truly believes Upton was scared?

Fuming maybe.

Young people use their phones for absolutely everything these days, so I dont think it's unusual that he made notes on his phone. He would always have it with him. He may have backed it up in cloud storage.

To be fair, there is a BMA 24/7 support helpline

https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/your-wellbeing/wellbeing-support-services/counselling-and-peer-support-services

He was shivering in his timbers in case he saw SP in the corridor and she gave him a funny look.

Imagine if forensic examination of the phone revealed that DU was a MN "regular"

Maybe it's the word contemporaneous that might be disproved.

I know that JKR quite heavily funded another high-profile one but I can't remember which (anyone??).

Well, she contributed some funds to the FWS Supreme Court case, though most of that was crowdfunded. Possibly Roz Adams and Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre? Roz Adams didn't have a crowdfunder and she now works for Beira's Place which JKR funds, so maybe JKR funded her discrimination case as well though I don't know for sure.

It's a small world @Butchyrestingface I thought I recognised Mridul Wadhwa on the Scottish Trans Alliance page but I thought "surely not!?!" According to the judge in the Roz Adams tribunal Wadhwa was a significant reason why NC and Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre are now old friends.

I wouldn't put someone from Scottish Trans Alliance in a position where they might be cross-examined. Who knows what fascinating perspectives they might come out with.

I'm not convinced that we should be looking deeply into the backgrounds of witnesses in this case. Even if they turned up and gave ludicrous or hard-to-believe evidence.

She was McLeod (unless she changed it).

I have no doubt that the notes je made about nurses leaving the f cr when he was there were contemporaneous as he was clearly looking for an opportunity to bully someone or make a case of harassment/ meanie treatment but as NC drew out in testimony it is very odd, therefore, that he didn’t also make notes about the patient care incidents he later made up included. She will be looking to establish if the note taking only applied to these incidents or more widely around other things. If only about this it does suggest he is very focussed on this and that could be part of the argument re harassment

It's still not appropriate for work related documentation. Unless it is a work phone subject to workplace security updates etc.

It might not be what's there so much as what's not there. A doctor who carefully makes phone notes every time a nurse looks at them funny but doesn't note the nurse walking out on a patient, that's a bit suspicious.

I can believe there may have been tears of narcissistic rage and that he feared for the intactness of his sense of self (which is why you shouldn't base your self image on what everyone else thinks of you nor make them responsible for it. It's called self image for a reason. However, when you're not a woman and want to be, the only thing you can do is simulate being one and it is crucial that everyone around you maintain this simulation because the simulation - the minds and perceptions of others - is the only place your sense of womanhood exists, being as it's not actually a material reality).

Actual fear for his physical safety, not a whit. As PPs have said, it's likely he thinks tears and terror are what a woman is.

If he was that scared he could have left the room.

I think he was enraged that Sandie defied him in refusing to pretend he was a woman.

If this is his personal phone and he was recording issues about work colleagues there could well be a breach of confidentiality. I would never do this on my work phone or email as it would be thoroughly unprofessional, neither would anyone I know.

Agreed. There's got to be something, hasn't there? Otherwise why bring in a techie expert.

DU - she said it wasn't safe for me to be there, asked what my chromosomes were, said it was analagous to the recent case, I assumed Isla Bryson...
JR - hang on please explain exactly the prisons comment
DU - she said it's like the situation in the prisons.
JR -what did you think
DU - I assumed she meant Isla Bryson, that she was comparing me to a sexual predator, there was an argument over men and women's estates
JR - she said you were a man, asked about chromosomes and prisons, how did you feel?
DU - awful, really really upset. I've never been spoken

It could be argued that by enabling his disordered thinking, allowing him to perform opposite-sex pretence at work and allowing him to use and continue using the female-only changing room when they knew that female staff had complained, they put him in an even more stressful situation than the one he'd already decided to put himself in, due to his disordered thinking. He needed to be told 'no' from the start and signposted to appropriate professional mental health support. The problem being that the NHS is captured along with the nursing and medical professional bodies who all say their members need to go along with opposite/neither sex pretence with patients and colleagues. Because the advice they have had on how to comply with the EA and GRA and how to treat 'trans' patients has come from activist organisations. Doctors' and nurses' jobs are demanding enough and they are not legal experts. Really none of them need the problem of a colleague who insists on being treated as the opposite sex, including being allowed to use opposite sex facilities, but because of the institutional capture, when faced with this difficult situation, they think they have to enable this and parrot the cult-speak. GMC lets male doctors register as female and vice versa, recording 'gender', instead of sex. RCN training materials say not using a trans-identifying male nurse's preferred female pronouns, and not letting him use the female toilets, is failing to treat this colleague with dignity and respect. So the ones who actively go along with enabling opposite sex pretence this might be activists themselves or more likely just going along with it out of self-preservation. Most of the ones who disagree likely stay quiet because they don't want the stress of what SP has been through, or they just want to get on with their jobs and don't have the time or energy for this shit and someone else can sort it out. It would be good if they spoke up en masse. Until both the medical profession and the law stop enabling opposite sex pretence (and I mean repeal the GRA and get the PC of GR out of the Equality Act, stop people being able to falsify their sex on documents, as well as stop all affirmation and medicalisation of 'gender identities'), then situations like this will keep arising and a lot of individuals and their families will go through more stress, either like SP testifying as to distressing ways in which they personally have been adversely affected by the real-life consequences of others being enabled to enact their opposite sex pretence in public/at work, or like the staff at NHS Fife, having to explain why they went along with the enabling, when their professional bodies told them they had to or there was no/insufficient/conflicting guidance, passing the buck and throwing each other under the bus while those in higher positions who set these wheels in motion knowing the possible adverse consequences are not held to account, and those with the power to stop it all do nothing.

Agreed. I think this is another no won situation for DU.

If he did keep detailed notes about individual work colleagues, situations, patient scenarios (even without patient id data it is cross referenceable by date/time/presentation and therefore a confidentiality risk) it is absolutely wrong to keep those stored on a personal phone. Plus whatever else undesirable it says about you - what you note and why might reveal things we really don't want to know).

If he didn't, then it is very hard to back up his later claims about concerns and makes him a liar.

lol. Really would have preferred the laughing emoji rather than a whole post but. 😂

Sounds like we might work for the same trust, or they all put out the same sad Comms!

I was watching the live stream. The sound was poor but I thought I heard that it was Jamie Doyle whose witness statement was accepted without need to attend?

I think it'll be the timing of the 'contemporaneous' notes that will be crucial. The content might be irretrievable or or too vague to be useful but any dates it was entered/edited/deleted will be significant.

NC drew out on the witness stand that the patient care complaints were added into the mix after SP letter before action and after AG was appointed as lead I/x.

NC also drew out the oddness of the lack of contemporaneous notes given how much he made of those with regard to f cr incidents. She also drew out that he couldn’t remember dates or times.

SP remembered one of the occasions he mentioned but her recall did not support his and another witness supported SPs recall of that event.

I addition NC pointed out that after he has added those in in order to create a formal complaint AGs email implied it was the first iteration ie she was shaping the email to be included in the bundle but it’s implication was false because there was a previous draft of the statement mentioned in an earlier email (or something along those lines) and this has been followed by a zoom chat then the patient safety concerns emerged.

So not vindictive in the sense that they weren’t made up just for the sake of it but were encounters that were given a malicious reframing in order to justify SP’s suspension in the light of legal action. ie they were lies created to retrofit an illegal process to make it appear legal.

it would suggest that this was AG instigating this but clearly DU happily complied.