NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #33

[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 and tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr-bd6. 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
Thread 32: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5376072-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-32

Would it be possible for people to turn their attention to this post by@FayeRCfrom a previous thread:

I have a similar court case in England's side which aims to protect single-sex facilities for women. It is in need of support to cover legal fees and can be found by searching for Faye Russell-Caldicott on crowdjustice.com

"I have issued an employment tribunal complaint against NHS England for indirect discrimination on the basis of sex (women), religion (Islam), philosophical belief (gender critical) and disability (PTSD) for having a policy in place which effectively renders the supposed single-sex toilet, changing room and showering facilities as mixed-sex."

Witnesses in the hearing so far with skeleton chronology:

Monday, 3 February 2025
Sandie Peggie

Tuesday, 4 February 2025
Sandie Peggie

Wedneday, 5 February 2025
Sandie Peggie
Maya Forstater
Mr Peggie (Sandie Peggie's husband)
Nicole Peggie (Sandie Peggie's daughter)

Thursday, 6 February 2025
a row about disclosure particularly over BMA documents
Sheila Bell (Sandie Peggie's mum)
Beth Upton

Friday, 7 February 2025
very late start, massive row over disclosure, agreed that Beth Upton would start giving evidence on Monday

Monday 10 February 2025
Beth Upton

Tuesday 11 February 2025
Beth Upton
collapse of public access

Wednesday 12 February 2025
Beth Upton

Thursday 13 February 2025
Esther Davidson

Friday 14 February 2025
Esther Davidson

a break of many months

Wednesday 16 July 2025
Isla Bumba

Thursday 17 July 2025
Gillian Malone

Friday 18 July 2025
Elspeth Pitt
Louise Curran

This is a list of Abbreviations used by Tribunal Tweets and has been taken from their substack

Claimant, respondents, counsel, members of the court

• C/SP - Claimant, Sandy Peggie
• NC - Naomi Cunningham, C’s barrister
• MG - Margaret Gribbons, C’s solicitor
• R/Board - first respondent, Fife Health Board
• R2/DU - second respondent, Dr B Upton
• Rs – first and second respondents
• JR - Jane Russell, KC, barrister for respondents
• AW - Adam Watson, solicitor for respondents
• J - Employment Judge Alexander Kemp
• ET - Employment Tribunal
• P1, P2 - additional panel members; CM Russell, L Brown

Witnesses/Frequently Referenced Personnel of NHS Fife

• MF - Maya Forstater, CEO of Sex Matters
• DP - Darren Peggie, Claimant's husband
• NP - Nicole Peggie, Claimant's daughter
• SB - Sheila Bell, Claimant's mother
• ED - Esther Davidson, SP’s line manager
• IB – Isla Bumba, NHS Fife Equality and Diversity Lead Officer
• KS - Kate Searle, A&E consultant
• SF - Stuart Fraser, SP’s RCN Rep
• AG - Angela Glancy, headed up in SP investigation
• VV – Vic Valentine, Equality Network

Abbreviations for frequently used terms (not exhaustive)

• AE - Accident & emergency department
• B&H - bullying and harassment
• CR - changing room
• CX – complaint
• DX - disciplinary procedure or process
• FtP - fitness to practice
• GC /SR: gender critical or sex realists. Belief that biological sex is important, immutable and different from gender identity
• GI – Gender identity is a person's internal sense of their own gender, which may or may not align with their birth sex.
• HI - hate incident
• HR - Human Rights
• IX - investigation
• PCP - provision, criteria or practice is a rule, policy, or practice that can put people at a disadvantage based on certain characteristics. The term is used in employment law to assess whether an employer's actions create different outcomes for employees based on their characteristics.
• SocMed - social media
• SM - Sex Matters
• TM – transman (person born female who claims a male gender identity)
• TMAM - transmen are men
• TW – Transwoman (person born male who claims a female gender identity)
• TWAW - transwomen are women
• OfS - Once for Scotland
• GM - Gillian Malone, Director of Nursing, NHS Fife
• EA - Equality Act 2010
• PC - protected characteristic; 9 under EA
• RA = risk assessment

Placemark. Thank you @nauticant and all contributors.

Placemarking for a later time when I can take a month off work & catch up with all this. Thanks for new thread again nauticant 🙏

@😎

Placemarking

You can go to bed now, hopefully, @nauticant I mean we can't fill a thread before breakfast can we...

I said LOCK THE THREAD.
So no roast dinner tomorrow, no washing will be done. and no visiting relatives.

Actually it's quite a dilemma 😎

Re ForrinMummy's question at the end of the last thread I'm sure if that was the case we would have at least a whiff of it by now.

That depends what NHS Fife gets up to tonight...

You are so on-point about my rationalisations over the past hour or so.

@Boiledbeetle and @Redshoeblueshoe 😂

These threads are great, it's such an important, serious topic but the humour from posters during the quieter moments makes all the madness seem a little more bearable

Debatable, l went to bed late last night, and got up too about 6 long pages of comments. And I have my page length set to max so a thread is 20 page.

A few more articles in the Times now:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/d57e3f40-bcbe-4790-b0e5-042f3f95a5d5?shareToken=4ad5d19c12f4aab1d108f9b65fcaf6c3
and
https://www.thetimes.com/article/965de2f3-f516-45e9-8bc9-251dee59df45?shareToken=e2a74d6cda11f8fee1bd3b84744c6191

Thanks Nauticant - quick get some rest!

FFS @nauticant are you precision thread ending. I think you can rest now. Unless Fife release an even more bat shit statement in the middle of the night, we surely won't get through 1000 posts by morning. And they wouldn't do that..... Hang on, would they?

Thanks for posting the link. Oh I was just about to investigate that as I saw it linked in the other Times article. I’d assumed it was NC and the press release…. Never thought of JR. Gosh so many called that out in Part 1 and asked what NHS Fife were thinking…?

@binglebong just picking up from the last thread.

I get your point about emailing stuff to yourself etc but I think a key difference is where we are discussing scenarios involving patients.

If DU was contemporaneously documenting SP behaviour around him and recording the patient interactions with dates, times and conditions listed, then that is cross reference-able information that could allow a patient to be identified. This is a potential breach of confidentiality. If his phone is not a work device with appropriate encryption then anyone who knows his pin etc can access those details. In a small local community it is not very hard to use triangulation of data such as age and medical history with date and time of attendance to come up with a name of a patient. Those of us who work in such places go out of our way to ensure such triangulation can't happen. If I write up anything for my revalidation for example I will wait til a long time after it happened and refer to it happening in a different season or time frame and flip sex or tweak age or occupation or context in some ways too.

If he had Datixed those incidents, then a copy of the Datix would be in the patient's file as well as SP personnel records, because it pertains to the patients treatment. If he was recorded things about a patient's care and interactions with staff but not copying at the very least into patient records then he's very far out of line with guidance.

If of course he didn't record any of the patient stuff on his phone then it's a win for confidentiality but makes it harder to back his allegations up. Especially if there are the extensive notes he claims to have on other staff members made in the same time period.

He really doesn't come out of it well in any direction.

I don't want any hcps looking after me to be making any reference at all to me in their written personal communications and devices. Certainly not with an accurate time, date and detail of my presentation.

Not helping @nauticant sleep soundly but just popping a placemarker on and also a thanks to everyone on these threads, I've been reading as much as I can and trying to wrap my non-legal mind around it.

When I saw the headline I thought the same as you! Very interesting that it's about JR instead!

Maybe if someone's pissed.

That does seem the likeliest explanation for all the previous ones.

Edited to say I'm obviously referring to NHS Fife statements, not Mumsnet threads 😂

That makes sense, thank you. I was thinking more about his views on the behaviour of others - i hadn't considered identifying patients.

Thanks so much everyone and especially Nauticant. Mostly lurking, but I have followed from the beginning
I'm hoping that NC turns up an email, or phone message, suggesting improvements to DU's statement as he requested.

With regard to FN's question: could people previously have lost jobs etc with DU but not come forward because of NDAs? I know they are being banned but haven't been yet - as this is a legal case could people come forward without being penalised?

I asked earlier but didn't see a reply - has this come on Newsnight at all?