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

Apparently the legal eagles signed off that magnum opus (which one???). And now Fife doesn't comment on unsubstantiated comments from unnamed sources...

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/politics/5293043/nhs-fife-staff-boss-resignation-sandie-peggie/

That's mental. Good God they could have partitioned off a wee corner in the male changing just for his lordship.
Whole lot cheaper than this episode.

Doesn't GMC allow doctors to chop and change their sex on the medical register? So how can we trust any investigation would be impartial?

Can you open this, @ThatCyanCat ? If you can, could you try to archive it for the rest of us who can't? https://archive.is

Re: the Courier report that NHS Fife claims that their “legal representatives” signed off the press statement.

• Rarely has my flabber been more gasted
• Do they mean Central Legal because they can’t possibly mean JR?
• Has the board left JR and n the position where she needs to tell the tribunal panel that she’d neither prior sight of it nor sign-off.
• Am I alone in feeling completely at sea as to the strategy?

I think that even for someone who lacked specific management training, a sense of natural justice should ensure that a manager keeps an open mind and properly investigates any complaint before supporting one individual against the other.

It is interesting that HR were ignored. Again ime on the (very rare) occasions when a manager considers disregarding their advice, HR are very specific about stating in writing that they cannot endorse said manager's proposed course of action...and will copy in key senior managers as well.

That is what happens in organisations that are basically well run, and there may well be an email of that nature floating around at NHSF. But all the indicators are that NHSF is very poorly run; either such an email would have been ignored by everybody, or it would never have been written because HR professionals knew as well as everyone else the consequences of not toeing the line.

They surely mean their own internal legal team. Who in that case should probably also be sacked!

Perhaps they asked Isla Bumba

That too. Liking the name change or have you been using that for a while!

NC is Ace, more talent in her wee toe than I have in my whole body!

More and more like the Post Office internal legal team and their scandal.

I've tried archiving the Courier article (although tbh I think the quality of their reporting is well worth a pound for 3 months but recognise that not everyone will want to sign up) but it won't load for me either.

It does but they still have professional standards to up hold or the professional becomes meaningless.

I'm loving the username BigSondsPieceBox which I've just seen! Gave me a good laugh

Would you expect Fife to have sent additional documents to add to the bundle, if they came into existence after the 3 Jan 25 Order by J Tinnion?

I thought the IX interviews were concluded during the period Upton was employed in A&E. In any case, he seemed ambivalent at best in his evidence ti the tribunal. Adamant that the incidents happened, but at the same time obvs well aware of implications and also commenting that the failure to report the patient safety element was a matter for him to reflect on.

If their legal representatives signed off on the original form of this statement with the pretty obvious libel, they need new legal representatives.

I've tried, has it worked?

Goodness. Fife ran that Friday afternoon nonsense past their legal team?
They're in more trouble than even we realised aren't they? 😁

Interesting piece with Iain Dale at the bottom of that article where JR claims to love tattoos and thinks that they are wonderful. She’s really pleased that Virgin cabin crew can now display their tattoos as freedom of expression. I’d be very surprised if JR or any of her friends/family/associates/colleagues have tattoos that they display, particularly at work. Is this a similar attitude to GI - it’s wonderful because it doesn’t affect me?

@Futurehappiness We havent seen the full extent of their advice, Naomi used some of it in cross examination.

https://archive.ph/jKrDf

The disclosure obligation is ongoing and continues until proceedings have concluded. It makes no difference whether the document was created before or after the order. If it falls into the categories of document covered by the order, it must be disclosed.

It's starting to seem like a version of "suicide by cop". They can't unilaterally concede the case because of Dr U, and JR can't sack any client without a very good reason. So Fife is possibly working very hard to give JR reason to sack them.😁

I'm a liberal left male, and my place is to stand by women's rights. I also commend the British Communist Party for their admirably-clear stance:

• For these reasons, the Communist Party rejects gender self-ID as the basis for sex- based entitlements in law to women’s single-sex rights, spaces and facilities.
• We call for ‘sex’ as a protected characteristic under the 2010 Equality Act to be defined as ‘biological sex’.

https://communistparty.org.uk/2023/03/29/the-gender-recognition-bill-and-equality-law/

I've been rushing to catch up so might have missed this but does anyone know what what time on Friday Baldrick dashed into NHS Fife PR office and announced "I have a cunning plan"?

I wonder if there the term 'legal representatives' is being used by the Fife spokesperson and/or the Courier without one or both appreciating that it suggests independent lawyers not an internal team.
JR clearly hadn't seen or approved it and I very much doubt the person sitting beside her (who somebody said was a solicitor rather a junior barrister) had either .
Which points to the internal lawyers.