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

They're a campaigning charity and they're campaigning.

They’re declassé enough to show up GLP by not only raising money but launching successful actions and intervening to purpose.

They actually win because of the soundness of their case and arguments. And, not least, because of the representation from the likes of not only Naomi Cunningham but Ben Cooper. Ben Cooper whose submissions the Supreme Court singled out for praise in their remarks re: FWS.

That must be profoundly embarrassing for some sizeable organisations with relatively substantial incomes, high profiles, and a poor record re: campaigning and litigation.

J K Rowling has been tweeting about it the past few hours, I knew she would at some point, she's fabulous !

Is the Fife Press Statement still doing the hokey cokey? How many versions are we up to now?

https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1946419318914212035?t=LIzYK9yY5FbQTCCtbZfIWA&s=19

Thank you.

Can anyone answer a question please? I think I've missed it but why is Jamie Doyle not being called? They seem to have been heavily involved in the whole thing and has been mentioned by some of the witnesses during questioning.

No, no. That's what I was trying to insinuate - ... and some how it was still SexMatters fault.

Maya gave evidence in the Tribunal. She did a written statement which can be found here. https://open.substack.com/pub/tribunaltweets/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr-005?r=1gxdhb&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
And she was cross examined by JR. She's been there to support Sandie on several days, including Thursday and Friday this week. I think what sent NHS Fife into orbit was her accessing the supplementary bundle and transcribing the emails. Which BTW are horrific. I'll do a separate post on smoking gun emails.

😂

For those not on x

I’d employ her in a heartbeat. Probably not that useful from 300 odd miles away though. I’m sure deep down Sandie would want to remain an A&E Nurse, especially if she thrives off the adrenaline, but there are a lot of organisations that would be pleased to have her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up doing some work with SM.

So, just trying to catch up here. I read the original NHS Fife statement yesterday. And now I read it today, and they've taken out all the bits about Sex Matters, same counsel, etc etc.

But they've put this in:

To be clear NHS Fife is not seeking to suggest that anyone involved with Sex Matters have contributed to the behaviour or issues mentioned above.

Which is weird, because on the current statement they haven't mentioned Sex Matters at all, up to that point.

God, they're so inept!

Statement on the Recommencement of the Employment Tribunal | NHS Fife

I am rather more tired than I used to be, so am keeping up by scrolling back to get the details on major points. I went to marinade some chicken yesterday and the thread had moved on about 8 pages!
Thanks to everyone for keeping us updated, you’ve put some hours in to keep us in the loop! 👏
I hope Sandie is doing well, I must admit to finding Fife’s behaviour hilarious yesterday, The Thick of It level fucking up. But she’s been living with this, which isn’t so funny. I hope she knows how grateful we are that she’s going through this for our rights and safety.

You cannot go to jail for not paying the licence fee. You can go to jail for failing to pay the fine.

A very good question, and one the panel will be asking themselves when coming to a decision.

The responents choose who to call to give evidence in defence of their case. The fact that have chosen not to call what appears to be a major player in the suspension of SP raises eyebrows (especially after seeing how helpful to the case the witnesses have been they have called)

SPs team could have called him as a witness, but as you can't know what he would say on the stand, it's much better to raise the point the responants didn't call him, and ask that the panel make inferences from that.

Other have mentioned that they could be at DU's insistence. That would explain why JR seemingly has no use for them in building the defense narrative - my thoughts being initially because DU was flailing, hoping (perhaps against JR's counsel) that having allies give testimony would bolster his arguments.

But the there's also the possibility that DU is being vindictive and intentionally dragging his fellow conspirators through the same ordeal he had to go through. Certainly he wouldn't seem to be above that degree of scheming pettiness and manipulation.

Thank you. That makes a lot of sense. Well, not sense from NHS Fife but that seems to be a given.

I'm always up to bag another munro.

God. i have to take DS1 to his swimming lesson. Who knows what number thread we will be on by the time I get back.

Jesus Christ! 😂😂 That sounds like Rik from the Young Ones!

Why is JR making it sound like that’s ‘our’ side pulling that sort of stunt??
She must know that it’s TRA Bullshit 101.

1. Behave like a mentalist at all times.
2. Douse yourself in urine, if you fancy it, cos it’s wholly convincing to any casual observer that you’re right; and not (in fact) a mentalist.

Etc, etc.

It is correct. You cannot watch any live content on a streaming service. It doesn't matter whether that is a major sporting event or your favourite blogger. The law does not attempt to differentiate between different types of content. What you think is ridiculous and untrue is actually true and is the law. Your favourite blogger going online is classed as a TV programme, so falls within the definition of things you can't watch legally unless you have a licence.

I'm amazed that I can still be amazed at the batshittery that these tribunals bring about.

Nah, you're alright. They're not in session today, and surely there are only so many ways NHS Fife can mess up over the weekend?!

On the subject of A&E veterans - a family member describing the chaos as lockdown lifted illustrated the stress levels by pointing out that they were the people in a hospital most able to cope with stress, to emphasise how telling it was that nearly every member of staff had to walk away to prevent themselves bursting into tears at some point.

The things I’ve heard from doctors I know personally about their training make it very clear that if you broke down crying because of something a nurse said to you, you’d be told to get a grip and consider whether you’re in the right career.

And yet DU gets special treatment. I doubt he’s popular among his peers.

Do we know whether its claimant or respondents who are calling the forensic phone investigator?

I'm assuming respondents since DU isn’t being recalled to comment on any discrepancies in his notes… so there aren’t any (?)

But would we know at this point if DU was being recalled?

I've only been here at MN for a few months and I'm still catching up on the details of the SP tribunal. With the best will in the world, I'm probably not going to get to grips with the threads from back in February.

So I have a question. What is SP's account of the fateful Christmas bust-up in the changing room? I understand DrU accused her of talking about chromosomes and Isla Bryson, but she has denied both of those (not that she would have been wrong). Did she talk about the legal background (where again she would have been correct), or was she not really aware of that? Did it really just boil down to "You're a man, you make me uncomfortable, you shouldn't be here"?

If I should happen to talk to my kids about this, I want to be able to push back against the NHS Fife interpretation! As I've seen from accounts here over the past three days (big thanks to TT), it really does seem that they accepted DrU's account without any scrutiny. I find that shocking.